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PROBLEMS OF 
PULPIT AND PLATFORM 






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PROBLEMS 

of 

Pulpit and Platform 



DAVID D. CULLER, A. M., Ph.D., 

Professor of English and German in 
Mount Morris College. 



ELGIN, ILLINOIS 

BRETHREN PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1907 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Receive"! 

NOV 20 1907 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS XXc. No, 

COPY B. 



.C« 






Copyright, 1907, 

BRETHREN PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

Elgin, Illinois. 



Received from 
Copyright Office. 

f2F'08 



liter S. H. MHUt 



CONTENTS 

Introduction, 7 

I. Forecast for Public Speaking, 11 

The Field. 
The Factors. 

II. The Speaker as Blood and Brawn, 18 

Bodily Beauty. 
Dignity and Grace. 
Physical Endurance. 

III. The Voice in Public Speaking, 25 

Vocal Powers. 

Natural and Acquired Speaking Voices. 

Proper Breathing. 

Correct and Distinct Pronunciation. 

Is the Singing Voice the Speaking Voice? 

Care of the Voice. 

IV. The Speaker as Mind, 42 

Figure the Mind in Too. 
Mental Attitude. 
Powers of Observation. 
Grasp of Generalities. 
Phrasal Power. 
The Power to Describe. 
Emotional Power. 

V. The Speaker as Spirit, 60 

Outlook for Life. 
Religious Qualifications. 

Keen Sense of God's Presence. 

An Abiding Faith. 

Sympathy, or the Spirit of Helpfulness. 
Personality. 

5 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

VI. The Audience, 70 

Audiences Differ. 

Audience Fusing. 

Audience Characteristics. 

The Speaker's Responsibility. 

A Visible Factor. 

Winning the Ears of an Audience. 

The Audience Responsive. 

The Best Listener. 

VII. The Discourse, 85 

Unity in Discourse. 
Finding a Theme. 
Discourse as Sermon. 
Length of the Sermon. 

VIII. Language and Thought in Discourse, 109 

Belong Together. 
Oral or Written. 
Notes, the Outline. 
Thought Processes. 
Discourse in Parts. 

IX. Style in Discourse, 130 

The Style is the Man. 

Clearness. 

Force. 

Emphasis. 

Rapidity. 

Tone. 

X. Delivery of Discourse, 143 

Speaking Natural. 

Make the Body Speak. 

Deliveries Differ. 

Thought and Delivery Must Wed. 

Earnestness. 

Eye and Voice Aglow. 

Delivery as Affected by the Hearer's Attitude. 



INTRODUCTION 



In the following pages the reader is briefly intro- 
duced to some of the vital problems of public speak- 
ing. In most books upon this subject the treatment 
has been from the standpoint of delivery. The books 
are called public speakers or books on elocution. They 
teach how to say things. This book does not pur- 
pose to do that, and so should not be placed in that 
class. Again, there are books that tell would-be 
preachers how to get up sermons. These are the 
books on homiletics. Many of them are very ex- 
haustive in their treatment. They are scholarly writ- 
ten and require much time and thought to master 
them. Very few books have as yet attempted a dis- 
cussion of the audience as a potent factor in effective 
public speaking. I have tried to combine these three 
in my study of the problems of the public speaker 
and have endeavored to give such helpful hints as 
brevity would allow me to include. 

7 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

It is my purpose to give to the busy man, who has 
public speaking to do, some definite ideas upon the 
problems he has to face as a public speaker. This 
brief study will suit those who have never studied 
these subjects and want a good introduction, and it 
will suit those who have no time nor inclination for 
an exhaustive study. I believe there are many who 
are interested in the problems herein discussed that 
have no time to study all of the subjects I have drawn 
from. For these I have written, and I shall feel re- 
paid if they find profit in reading what follows. 

D. D. Culler. 
Mount Morris College 
March 5, 1907 



A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures 
of silver. — Proverbs 25: I L 



Problems of Pulpit and Platform 



CHAPTER I. 

Forecast for Public Speaking. 

The Field. — When a young man looks toward his 
future life-work and seriously contemplates public 
speaking as a means of bread-winning he asks himself 
the question, What is there in this field to merit one's 
most determined effort? The sincerity of his ques- 
tion deserves a candid answer. For when he con- 
siders the vast circulation of all kinds of printed mat- 
ter, papers, magazines and books, there is, indeed, 
little wonder that at first he imagines the field of public 
speaking narrow and uninviting. A second look will, 
doubtless, change his mind. About him everywhere 
he will find the evident need of effective public speak- 
ing. Not only do the pulpit and the platform beckon 
him who has talent, but the bar and the chair of the 
professor, too, hold out enticing arms. Certainly 

there is a wider field now, than ever in the past, for 

11 



12 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

the man who, with ready speech and worthy thought, 
can reach the masses. So many lines of work nowa- 
days need those who can speak in public. 

It is true that printed matter furnishes much in- 
formation and thus relieves in a large measure the 
burden of instruction once falling upon the public 
speaker, but the day has not yet come when printed 
matter can take the place of the speech of the law- 
yer or statesman, the pastor or the lecturer. Ready 
speech is not undervalued and never will be for any 
length of time. The reporter has gotten a perma- 
nent job, but his ceaseless newsgetting does not make 
void the power of the human voice in public speak- 
ing. 

In the publication known as " Who's Who in Amer- 
ica " short biographies of eminent men in the United 
States are given. In the edition of 1900, 8,602 per- 
sons are mentioned. From Prof. Dexter's study of 
these successful men and women we learn that 94 
are actors, 662 clergymen, 1,101 college professors, 
446 congressmen, 218 educators, 861 lawyers, 27 lec- 
turers, 202 statesmen. All of these must be pro- 
ficient as public speakers, which means that about 
forty-two per cent of the entire number of eminent 
men and women in the United States in 1900 found 



FORECAST FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. 13 

oratory beneficial in the struggle for success. The 
field of public speaking is thus seen to be anything 
but narrow and unattractive. 

From the standpoint of preparation for life with 
its attendant success or failure, Bismarck tells us that 
college men rule Germany. They rule, of course, 
because they are able to render better service to the 
social, civic and religious institutions of their country. 
Prof. Dexter found that 3,237 of the 8,602 mentioned 
in " Who's Who," were college graduates, and that 
the whole number of living graduates at that' time, 
from which these had been chosen, was 33,400, show- 
ing that out of the college graduates, one out of every 
106 found a place among the eminent in America. 
The ability to speak in public will enable the col- 
lege man to render still more effective service, thus 
giving him an additional right to rule. A leader in 
thought should be able to give effective oral expres- 
sion to his ideas. The cause of negro education would 
not be so successful if Booker T. Washington were 
a failure as a public speaker. The presidents of our 
educational institutions, the governors of our States, 
and all who have to meet the problems of the age in 
whatever line, must be able to give expression to 
their thoughts before assembled masses. A great ora- 



14 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

tor can draw men to him as none other can. The 
human, spoken word has no equal in power over 
the hearts of men. 

Dr. A. A. Willits, the apostle of sunshine, who for 
half a century kept one foot upon the lecture plat- 
form while he had charge of a church; and for the 
last ten years has given all his time to lecturing, 
thus convincingly expresses himself upon the impor- 
tance and opportunity of the platform : " My con- 
viction is that the platform presents the broadest and 
grandest field for the discussion of all topics in which 
men are interested — social, political, intellectual, moral. 
It also gives to the orator an arena for the untram- 
meled use of all the faculties of the human mind — 
reason and logic, wit and humor — with which to incul- 
cate truth or combat error." Beecher in a lecture 
once said, " We are living in a land whose genius, 
whose history, whose institutions, whose people emi- 
nently demand oratory." Emerson has expressed the 
opinion that in no country is eloquence a greater power 
than in the United States. Here are conventions in 
the interests of commerce, manufacturing, education 
and morality. Science, too, would be served ; art needs 
her advocates ; and religion must enlist talent. Where 
a broader field? Where a worthier? 



FORECAST FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. 15 

The Factors. — In the production of every discourse 
there are three factors concerned. The first is the 
speaker, whose function it is to prepare and deliver 
the discourse; the second is the audience, for the 
benefit of which the discourse is given ; and the third, 
the discourse itself, which is the means used by the 
speaker to accomplish his aim. Not one of these is 
a constant factor. Now one and now another absorbs 
most of the interest, and consequently contributes 
most to the accomplishment of the ends of oral dis- 
course. 

On every hand we see men who have a message 
for mankind, their mouths are open, nothing can close 
them except the delivery of their message. So it was 
in the days of the prophets and so it is even to-day. 
No man really has the right to take the time of his 
fellow-man unless he has a message worth listening to, 
and I can place no criterion for the worthiness of a 
man's message other than his own estimate of its im- 
portance, for when I attempt to fix a hearer's esti- 
mate as the final yardstick by which a speaker's dis- 
course is to be measured I am confronted with the 
fact, lamentable though it be, that some of the grand- 
est messages ever brought to man have been ruth- 
lessly cast aside by him. I need only cite the re- 



16 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

jection of the prophets by the idolatry- tainted Israel- 
ites and the persistent rejection of Jesus by the stiff- 
necked Jews. Other examples can easily be pro- 
duced from recent times. The first essential fac- 
tor, then, in the production of spoken discourse is the 
man who has a message that must be proclaimed. A 
man with such a message will find an audience whether 
his message be truth or falsehood, but, whether truth 
or falsehood, he must have an audience before he can 
have the effects of public discourse. 

Without the audience the public speaker subsides 
into the hermit and his influence is reduced to himself 
alone. From this standpoint the audience is just as 
important as the speaker. Besides being essential in 
this way, an interested audience becomes a sort of 
potent magnet and does a great deal to draw out of a 
speaker all there is in him. It furnishes him inspira- 
tion, from which fact some of our ancestors were not 
slow to affirm that a speaker should not prepare for 
his discourse, but should depend wholly upon the in- 
spiration which the occasion would give. That an 
interested and sympathetic audience can wring from 
the speaker what he could not give in his study is 
very evident; but it does not take the place of the 
message which is distinctly and consciously the true 



FORECAST FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. 17 

speaker's, even before he ever sees his audience. For 
an audience gives only objective value to the discourse 
which has previously had subjective value. 

Thus the three factors become essential to pub- 
lic discourse. Without all three it is impossible to 
have the practical effects sought in this form of dis- 
course. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Speaker as Blood and Brawn. 

Bodily Beauty. — " People are beginning to see that 
the first requisite to success in life is to be a good 
animal." Interpreted properly this statement of Mr. 
Spencer's may be accepted as applicable to the public 
speaker. To him his physical powers are largely a 
true index of his oratorical ability. Though psycholo- 
gists may yet be quarreling over the theory that bodily 
defects have a definite bearing upon mental qualities, 
still we are safe in asserting that bodily strength and 
beauty are powerful factors of sustained oratorical 
success. 

To no one is a manly, good-sized physique despic- 
able, for it gives its possessor many advantages. It 
gains for him instant recognition and he has things 
his way from the start. The speaker of inferior bod- 
ily endowment must overcome the prejudice of first 
impressions; he has to win everything, nature does 
nothing for him. However, bodily strength and beau- 
ty do not reside alone in the symmetry of bodily 

18 



THE SPEAKER AS BLOOD AND BRAWN. 19 

organs. One organ may be so beautiful, or another 
so powerful as wholly to offset other marked defects. 
Even in ugliness may reside a unique power, as is 
evidenced in Mirabeau, who said of himself, " No 
one knows all the power of ugliness. When I shake 
my terrible mane none dare interrupt me." In his 
hideous ugliness lay a fierce strength which nature 
liberally aided in the endowment of a strong, flexible 
voice. 

A shortage in stature or in symmetry of organs is 
often amply compensated by a strong, clear, flexible 
voice, a stout heart, and a manly face. In fact, an 
expressive countenance covers a multitude of defects. 
And nothing can take the place of a kindling eye, 
quick in its perception of truth, innocent in its frank- 
ness, and penetrating in its interpretation of character. 
Daniel Webster had such an eye, large, lustrous and 
beautiful. Bacon says : " Virtue is like a rich stone, 
best plain set ; and surely virtue is best in a body that 
is comely, though not of delicate features and that 
hath rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect." 

Dignity and Grace. — Recent investigations have es- 
tablished the fact that men of genius are inclined to 
surpass men of common ability in awkwardness. 
There may be room still, however, for a difference of 



20 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

opinion as to what constitutes awkwardness. Many 
public speaker of note, like Webster and Chatham, 
have had perfect command of themselves, which con- 
duces to both dignity and grace. If a speaker would 
have an audience respect him and believe him and 
obey him, he must respect himself — a certain lofti- 
ness of bearing, which does not border on arrogance, 
must be his; he must be at ease in his work, which 
gives him grace in its highest form. The peculiar 
charm of John C. Calhoun, the Great Nullifier, is 
said to have been an utter forgetfulness of self and 
a deference to the feelings and wishes of others, which 
made him famed far and wide for his courtly manners. 
It was his captivating manners as well as his strik- 
ing eloquence that won so many friends for Henry 
Clay. It is affirmed, indeed, that his courtly manners 
won many a fight for him. Elder R. H. Miller was a 
clear, logical, thinker and speaker. He was a de- 
bater of great power. Without doubt his calm, courte- 
ous, dignified manners aided him in whipping his op- 
ponent in debate as much as did his clearness or his 
logic. 

Grace is not polish, it is not stiffness, it can not 
be manufactured by the laundryman and tailor, it is 
not starch and broadcloth. Dignity is the direct out- 



THE SPEAKER AS J&LOOD AND BRAWN. 21 

cropping of native power. It gains grace when the 
environment in which it works becomes familiar. 
Grace is strength softened by sympathy. In great 
natures a consciousness of power begets dignity, in 
small ones it breeds haughtiness. Grace is essentially 
the power to move effectively. So all useless move- 
ments are opposed to grace. Perfect knowledge of an 
art and power gained by practice in it, both add grace. 
Bacon believed " the principal part of beauty " to be 
derived from " decent motion." But it is folly to im- 
agine that grace gained on the waxed floor of the 
dancing hall will give grace to the aspiring orator in 
his speech-making. The flourishing twists of the 
baseball pitcher have little in common with the telling 
gestures of the accomplished orator. The fountain 
source of dignity is in an inner elevation of soul. 
Some who are physically insignificant are, neverthe- 
less, spiritually unconquerable. By many Paul is 
thought to have been little and feeble physically, but 
his soul power gave him dignity and grace. In bear- 
ing the orator must have dignity, the modest ac- 
companiment of native and acquired power. In ac- 
tion he must have grace, which is the evidence of cul- 
ture, of knowledge, and of skill in the art of public 
speaking. 



22 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

Physical Endurance. — Genius is in the blood, for 
nine-tenths of it is hard work. The chief of the South 
Sea Islands said to Sir John Lubbock, " Ideas make 
me sleepy." By this he indicated that he was physical- 
ly unable to sustain the tremendous strain of mental 
labor. In the fight for life muscle tells. Commercial- 
ly, as proven by history, the blood of the Teuton is 
worth two and a half times that of the Egyptian and 
twice that of the native of India. " A stout heart wins 
a fair lady," and literally also a fair renown. You 
can not stifle a strong brain in a strong body. It is 
constructed for great service and great service will 
it render. Put a big brain in a little body and it is 
fatally ineffectual. A weak brain can do nothing in a 
big, unwieldy body. 

Physical energy is conceded by all to be one of the 
essentials of good discourse, and it can not be at its 
best unless there is a good physique upon which it is 
based. From the very nature of the work, the ne- 
cessity of vitality in the vital organs is apparent; for 
there will be long trips, long periods of hard study, 
irregular times of sleeping, and times when the strain 
of repeated public appearances will be excessive. To 
sustain all of this the public speaker must cultivate 
the ability to rest when opportunity offers and not 



THE SPEAKER AS BLOOD AND BRAWN. 23 

when he would like. He must be able to snatch every 
moment from waste and inactivity and put it to the most 
urgent use. The orator must have rest and he must 
prepare for his next speech. Then, too, it is just as 
important that he be able to keep from worrying as 
it is that he prepare, for worry will wear him out 
faster than work will. 

Physical endurance must, then, be based upon the 
concerted action of brain and body. In unremitted 
mental toil the body must support the brain without 
stint and without murmur. A poor digestion may 
spoil what might otherwise have become a good ser- 
mon. Tone, originality, and force are sensibly de- 
pendent upon blood and brawn. Oratorical talent 
must be backed by physical endurance. 

It is not the physical power which makes the prize 
fighter that the orator needs; but the physical en- 
durance that will sustain the vital processes under 
heavy strain in mental as well as in physical toil. It is a 
good, healthy digestion; a good, healthy circulation; 
and a good, strong, calm nervous organization that one 
wants. To have these, one does not need a large body, 
nor even a perfectly symmetrical one. But without 
healthy organs one can not have the blood and brawn 
that wins in the race of the orator's life. 



24 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

In his " Up From Slavery " Booker T. Washington 
says : " I have learned that success is to be measured 
not so much by the position that one has reached in 
life as by the obstacles he overcame in trying to suc- 
ceed." In this struggle to overcome the obstacles 
barring the gifted from their legitimate success phy- 
sical endurance is needed. In this respect oratory is 
no exception. Without doubt merit under any sky 
will be recognized ultimately; however, before the 
recognition comes, there is needed, frequently, the 
strongest nerve, and the toughest muscle to with- 
stand all hardships. For it is well known that suc- 
cess comes only after much toil, wherein the flesh, 
as well as the spirit, is severely tried. Recall the 
struggles of a Demosthenes with his stammering 
tongue, of a Webster with his boyish backwardness 
and his stage fright; and be assured that the masters 
in oratory had their difficulties, too; and that suc- 
cess, true and lasting, came to them only after much 
hard work. If an orator would succeed he must have 
the brightest blood and the bravest brawn to sustain 
his mental effort. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Voice in Public Speaking. 

Vocal Power. — Few men ever think of the wonder- 
ful power of the human voice. Though subtile and 
elusive in analysis, it still carries with it a positive 
kinetic power akin to authority. There is that quality 
in it which aptly fits it for conveying an appeal or a 
command. Its power is sometimes magical. Notice 
how quickly we change our opinion of a man when 
once we hear his voice, hitherto unknown to us. The 
voice almost invariably compels us to reconstruct our 
estimate of those whom we have seen but have not 
heard. Scientists assure us that all animals fear and 
respect the human voice. For each of us, too, there is 
some hidden power in it. A spirit seems to go with it to 
command or entreat — a spirit, indeed, whose magic 
power we can neither resist nor escape. Even the 
dog at the heels of his master feels its potency. In 
construction the voice is as intricate and delicate as 
any other of the bodily organs. But it is not my pur- 
pose to give its anatomy, for that does not belong to 
my topic. It is the instrument most used by the pub- 

25 



26 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

lie speaker and its care is of the highest importance. 
Through ignorance it is sometimes abused. Through 
false notions of oratory it is sometimes overtaxed. 
Its real value lies in its great versatility, its magnetic 
power, and its mysterious meaning. The rich, varied 
songs of the lark and nightingale are justly loved and 
admired the world over, but the voice of man is cap- 
able of much more than either of these. What can 
compare with it in richness and compass? 

According to Beecher the human voice is " the 
greatest force on earth among men." Mr. William 
Shakespeare in his " Art of Singing " says : " The 
human voice will never cease to be the most beautiful 
of instruments when properly used ; it will never cease 
to strike the chords of the human heart with a direct- 
ness and an intensity unapproached by any other 
instrument." As long as man needs his fellow, as 
long as lover woos a sweetheart, or as the interests 
of life are dear to men, so long will the tones of the 
human voice have a worth exceeding treasured gold, 
a melody and sweetness equalled by no flute or harp. 

Natural and Acquired Speaking Voices. — The best 
speaking voices are those that are naturally strong 
and flexible. But even a weak voice can be much 
strengthened by judicious practice. Sometimes we are 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 27 

instructed to speak in our natural tones when ad- 
dressing an audience. This is all right if the orator 
have a giant's voice or if his audience be very small. 
However, the ordinary tones of the average man are 
not sufficient to speak satisfactorily to an audience' 
of five hundred. So that from this point of view 
all speaking voices are acquired voices. Those that 
are strongest naturally still need some drill, and much 
practice, getting better as they are brought under 
control. A great deal can be done with a weak voice 
by finding out its weakness and then studiously builds 
ing it up. For this, proper exercise is needed. And 
then, when it has been made as strong as possible, 
care should be taken not to overwork it or strain it. 
Few voices have no strong points. It should be 
the speaker's constant effort to make the most of the 
strong points, thereby shielding the weak points from 
excessive strain. What your voice lacks in volume 
or strength may be measurably made up by distinct- 
ness of articulation. Prof. Wilkinson says of Dr. 
Talmage that his voice is " a somewhat harsh and 
singularly inflexible and prevailingly monotonous or- 
gan of utterance. It lacks pathos, but for these de- 
fects the orator compensates by force and distinctness 
of speech." If a speaker does not speak so very loud 
we are satisfied if he gives us distinct pronunciation. 



28 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

A weak voice should have the advantage of variety 
of delivery. All words should not be spoken in the 
same tone. Gesture and facial expression may be 
made to assist a weak voice. What your voice lacks in 
volume it may make up in carrying quality, for though 
the vocal chords may be thin they may be strong and 
your force of breath ample, so that, with flexibility 
gained through practice, you may make your thin, 
piercing voice do good work. Make the strongest 
possible voice out of the one you have. But do not 
try to make your minor quality do your major work. 
That is not wisdom. You heard a speaker with a big, 
strong voice the other day, and he cut and slashed 
things so easily that you imagined you could not be an 
orator until you could speak in those big, strong tones ; 
so you set to work to imitate them, and now you talk, 
sing, read the newspapers, and even laugh, in the 
borrowed tones. Do I think you will ever make them 
your own? It will be a good thing for you if you fail, 
for at best you can only have a weaker voice than the 
one you started with so far as possibilities are con- 
cerned. Be satisfied with your own voice, but do not 
rest until you have developed it to its highest capacity. 
A man's voice is a living instrument that deserves to 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 29 

be well guarded against everything that might impair 
it. 

Proper Breathing. — One of the most effective ways 
to develop the voice is to practice proper breathing. 
Dr. Lennox Browne asserts that a change from faulty 
to proper breathing has been known to change a 
falsetto into a full, sonorous voice, and to cure the 
" speaker's sore throat." 

To breathe properly the work should be done by the 
midriff and ribs, and not by raising the shoulders or 
by using the upper part of the chest. The breath 
should be controlled by the same means. It should 
not be stopped by closing the mouth or by contracting 
the muscles of the throat. These latter methods give 
rise to faulty sounds and cause excessive labor on the 
part of organs not intended for that kind of work. 
While speaking, all muscles about the throat should be 
relaxed that thus they may have freedom properly to 
articulate the volume of air being expelled, so as to 
produce the correct succession of sounds. 

It is desirable to keep a reserve of breath while 
speaking. The Rev. J. P. Sandlands in his " Voice 
and Public Speaking " rather boastingly affirms that 
he once read the whole of the Lord's Prayer after a 
single inspiration. He did this to keep from inhaling 



30 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

the cold air of the churchyard where he had to read 
the prayer at a funeral service. However, I do not 
deem such breathing gymnastics conducive to either 
the highest spirituality or the most effective skill in 
the use of the voice. It is not the straining — the 
speaking to the very greatest limit possible — that gives 
the skill most desired in public speaking. It is rather 
the ability to control the breath fully and easily and 
also to keep a reserve of breath on hand at all times 
so that the proper tone can be given to all of the words. 
To do this one must learn to breathe quickly and quiet- 
ly. " The celebrated basso Lablanche is said to have 
watched for four minutes the equally celebrated tenor 
Rubini without being able to discover any signs of 
breathing." (Wm. Shakespeare, in " The Art of 
Singing.") 

One should breathe as high up in the chest and as 
low as possible, but there should be at the same time 
no sign whatever of the exertion in so doing. It is 
therefore a mistake to attempt to speak with the last 
bit of breath, for no one can thus keep up the fullness 
and steadiness of the tone. Some speakers are in the 
habit of closing every sentence or period in a lower 
tone than the one in which they started. This fault 
may be remedied by proper breathing, for it is a lack 



tHE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 31 

of breath and not a weakness of the vocal organs that 
causes it. Such speakers have not yet learned to take 
in air at the proper time. They should remember that 
the voice is much like a locomotive, that has its fixed 
stations for taking in its supply of water and coal. 
The voice must have breath to run it, and if its capa- 
city is not so very great the better plan is to take in 
air oftener. Either to carry too large a reserve, or to 
run too low, is alike faulty. Each speaker must regu- 
late the frequency of inspirations to his own capacity 
and the needs of the particular discourse he is deliver- 
ing. Persistent daily practice for six months or a year 
will work wonderful development in the breathing 
efficiency of most speakers. No one is too old to profit 
by judicious exercise of the diaphragm and ribs in 
breathing. 

Correct and Distinct Pronunciation. — One of the 
very greatest of singers, Pacchiarotti, is said to have 
declared : " He who knows how to breathe and how 
to pronounce, knows well how to sing." We can say 
the same thing about a public speaker. It does not all 
depend upon breathing, however, for the words must 
be properly and distinctly pronounced also. After the 
breath has been set in motion by the action of the 
diaphragm and the ribs, there still remains the proper 



32 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

manipulation of the vocal chords, lips, tongue, teeth, 
and palate so that the sound may flow in succession 
properly articulated. All these organs must have the 
greatest freedom in which to act. The jaw and throat 
should be free and independent of each other. Loose- 
ness about the throat conduces to the free and proper 
use of the vocal organs. Words should be clear-cut, 
they should stand off distinct from each other like 
pearls upon a string. Words that end with a vowel 
sound should be finished with the mouth and throat 
open, for otherwise a faulty ending is given. Try it. 
Pronounce the word " go," and when the sound is full 
and strong suddenly shut the mouth. The result is 
" g°P-" A proper control of the breath will not give 
this result. Neither the throat nor the mouth should 
be used to stop the breath in such words. 

The old masters in singing used the mirror to detect 
any distortion of the features while engaged in sing- 
ing. Now, the device was a good one, for any distor- 
tion of feature discloses an unnatural position of the 
muscles used in singing. All this is as true of speaking 
as of singing, and the practice before a mirror is not 
as foolish as some have tried to make it out. An un- 
natural expression, a face all awry or a head thrown 
back, tells one immediately that the tones are not 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 33 

natural and that the strain will likely end in hoarse- 
ness or sore throat. Get the organs back into their 
natural position and talk within the compass of the 
voice you have, using your strongest points for the 
hardest work, and your voice will soon be a supple, 
obedient servant. 

The vowels of the English language are not sus- 
tained to any great length, and this, together with the 
difficulty of our consonants, tends to encourage a 
throaty, blurred pronunciation. For this reason the 
public speaker needs constantly to strive for distinct- 
ness in utterance. 

Is the Singing Voice the Speaking Voice? — This 
question interests us because, if one, then what de- 
velops one will develop the other; and what wearies 
one will weary the other. It will also be inferred that 
a good speaking voice will be a good singing voice, 
and vice versa. So we may conclude that a singing 
master may be well qualified from the standpoint of 
voice to do public speaking. 

Mr. Shakespeare in " The Art of Singing," says : 
" Singing is so much more sustained, and so much 
louder and higher than ordinary talking that it re- 
quires a corresponding increase in intensity of breath 
pressure." Elsewhere he says : " We must regard 



34 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

singing as a combination of tune and speech." Rev. 
N. D. Hillis in " Foretokens of Immortality " puts the 
distinction this way : " The melody is one-half in the 
singer's voice ; the other half is the cultivated ear." He 
means that without the cultured ear the singer's voice 
would avail little. So it is in music, indeed, for unless 
the ear be able to detect and locate tones, singing can 
not succeed. Prof. Johnson in his " Forms of English 
Poetry " recognizes this, too, for he says : " The 
secret of successful song writing is the happy combi- 
nation of a fine musical ear with a poetical tempera- 
ment. The song writer need not be a practical musi- 
cian, but it will assist him wonderfully if he be one." 
The ear of the musician must be able to distinguish 
every sound and place every tone in the scale, but the 
orator does not need to do so. In " Paradise Lost," 
Milton distinguishes thus : " Eloquence for the soul, 
music for the sense." 

Mr. Sheppard in " Before an Audience " emphati- 
cally states the singing voice to be different from the 
speaking voice ; he says that " you can not acquire an 
adequate and enduring speaking voice by acquiring 
an adequate and occasional singing voice." And again 
he puts it this way : " A good speaking voice is not a 
good singing voice. They are entirely different 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 35 

voices." The distinction Mr. Sheppard insists upon is 
rather a matter of frequency of use than of function. 
The singer uses his singing voice only when he sings 
and not when he converses, but the orator uses the 
same voice for all kinds of work. This distinction is 
a mere surface distinction and not worthy of the seri- 
ous attention Mr. Sheppard gives it. 

It ought to show in function if the distinction 
between the singing voice and the speaking voice is 
to be worth our attention. Fundamentally, what is the 
difference between speaking and singing? It is the 
difference between the rhythm of prose and that of 
poetry when the latter has the rhythm emphasized to 
the greatest extent. Singing uses words only as 
means to bring out the music or rhythm. The music 
is the aim, it is pre-eminent in its command of atten- 
tion. The music must not be sacrificed for the sense 
of the words. In oratory the music is subordinate to 
the sense. First of all the thought must be clear, so 
attention must be given to the sound symbol as a 
means of conveying thought, first and foremost, and 
afterwards attention may be given to the words as a 
means of conveying music, namely, the music inherent 
in eloquent prose. This distinction necessitates a 
different use of the same word in singing and speak- 



36 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

ing, and hence requires a different use of the voice in 
uttering it. There seems to be no question as to the 
validity of this distinction. 

Statistically we can easily come to the same con- 
clusion. For it is a well-known fact that great musi- 
cians or great singers are not great orators, and it is 
equally true that great orators have never been noted 
for their musical talent, either in the creation of music 
or in the presentation of it. Surely if the singing and 
speaking voice are one, there would be more evidence 
of it in this respect. 

One can easily notice the difference in the voice of 
the same person when he reads the hymn, leads the 
singing, and then speaks. Now why these differences ? 
Evidently the distinction is fundamentally grounded in 
the different attitudes of the mind toward the audience 
and toward the subject matter. The reader attempts 
to carry thought by means of thought symbols. The 
singer adds tune to the word symbols. The speaker 
who talks impromptu must give the greater attention 
to the thought and its appropriate embodiment in 
words, while the voice that produces these words in 
sound symbols for the interpretation of his hearer 
must work almost automatically, being but slightly 
under the conscious control of the speaker's will. 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 37 

Then of the three, the public speaker, the public 
singer, and the public reader, the public speaker needs 
a voice the most reliable and the most prompt to yield 
ready control. Hence the public speaker needs the 
most practice ; indeed, his practice should be constant. 
With only a few speakers can this constant practice 
be had in public so the only means left is private 
practice. There are some, who through prejudice, 
and others, who through ignorance, discourage this 
private practice of the voice. But the voice must be 
kept in trim some way, and if the opportunity is not 
given for practicing in public, it should be kept in good 
condition by private exercise. Certainly it is not 
strange that your voice fails you when you use it 
only once a month, or so, for public speaking, provid- 
ed you never give it any private exercise in the inter- 
vals. With little use the muscles you want in public 
speaking have grown weak and incapable of the neces- 
sary strain incumbent upon them for the delivery of a 
discourse to a large audience. It is somewhat different 
if the room be small. But even then the speaker's 
voice will lose its flexibility if it is not kept in constant 
practice. 

Care of the Voice. — The speaker has no more im- 
portant tool for the delivery of his message than his 



38 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

voice. And the better it is by nature the more for- 
tunate he is, if, perchance, he knows how to take 
proper care of it. The unskilled use of a good tool 
is likely to do more damage by misthrusts than would 
be done if the tool were poor. So the misuse of a 
naturally strong and flexible voice may be accom- 
panied by most serious injury to the organ itself. For 
it is evident that hoarseness and sore throat are usually 
the evil effects of a misuse of the voice. The voice 
is strained, or it is neglected, and then before long it 
is cracked and sore, and only too soon so overworked 
that it is wholly unfit for public service. Some 
speakers talk too loud, and so overwork the vocal 
chords; others pitch their voices too high, and so 
strain the chords. Not a few do too much cutting and 
slashing, using their voices much as a careless mower 
does a sharp scythe. He slashes it through weeds and 
briars, over stones and stumps, heedlessly and merci- 
lessly. Such a mower, however sharp his scythe may 
have been to start with, will not cut a clean swath 
very long. So a speaker who saws and yells and talks, 
and talks in doors and out of doors, paying heed neither 
to the size of the room, the weight of his thought in 
relation to utterance, nor the purity or temperature 
of the air in which he speaks, will soon find that his 
voice can not give clean-cut, smooth utterance. 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 39 

The vocal chords may be played upon best by him 
who can control his breathing best. But just as the 
violinist must give proper tension to each of the strings 
of his violin before he can give the desired tone, so 
the speaker must tune, even incessantly, his vocal 
chords; and his speaking, whether good or bad, will 
depend upon his skill in tuning as well as in breathing. 
Still the violinist has not played his music when he 
has finished his tuning, neither has the speaker finished 
his speech when he has given the proper tension to his 
vocal chords; for as the musician must dexterously 
wield his bow, so the speaker must dexterously control 
his breath. A tone that roars or pierces, stuns the 
ear or torments it instead of stimulating it, and thus 
detracts from the thought which the words should 
convey. I once knew a kind-hearted old German who 
spoke English very brokenly, and sometimes I was 
sorely tempted to laugh at his conduct when his lis- 
tener failed to understand him. Instead of trying to 
speak his words more distinctly he added force and 
spoke louder and louder at each repetition. When the 
limit of his lung power had been reached he would 
shake his head and walk off. Consequently, though 
he had lived here long enough to learn to speak two 
languages, he never mastered the oral expression of 



40 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

one; because he did not go at it properly. Strive to 
utter your words distinctly ; it is easier. 

One cannot speak with closed mouth, and teeth held 
close together; however, I have seen public speakers 
try it. The vocal chords are tireless strings, but it is 
not right to demand too much of them. With open 
mouth there still remains enough for the vocal chords 
to do. The heart will beat for eighty or ninety years, 
day and night, but its relaxation and its frequent, 
though extremely short rests suffice for its health and 
activity. The vocal chords, too, will serve long and 
do strenuous work if they are used judiciously and 
allowed proper relaxation. While uniformity in de- 
livery is desirable, yet the tension of the vocal chords 
should vary in the delivery, so that they may have the 
required relaxation. 

Drinking cold water just before speaking is claimed 
by some to have a salutary effect, as it hardens and 
toughens the vocal chords, thus rendering them less 
liable to strain. Inhaling cold air, or drinking cold 
water immediately after speaking is injurious to the 
vocal chords, because they are then heated, and, like 
any other muscle, may be cooled off too quickly. In 
cold weather the throat should have extra protection. 
Silk is best for wearing next the skin, since it preserves 



THE VOICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 41 

a mean temperature best and thus helps one to avoid 
colds and hoarseness. If compelled to sit in a draft, 
one may avoid the evil consequences in a measure by 
doing an extra amount of breathing, which has the 
same result as taking physical exercise, for it forces 
a more rapid circulation of the blood, resulting in an 
increase of the warmth of the body. 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Speaker as Mind. 

Figure the Mind in Too. — Brains talk. You can 
speak about body and spirit all you like, you can never 
get away from the fact that an orator must have 
brains; and that he must know how to use them, too. 
" I know of no nobler body of men, of more various 
accomplishments, of more honesty, of more self- 
sacrifice, of more sincerity, than the clergy of 
America. I bear them witness that in multitudes of 
cases they are grotesque; that in multitudes of cases 
they are awkward and that in multitudes still greater 
they are dull," said Beecher. A man may do a great 
deal of work and in many ways be dull, but he cannot 
deliver the telling message to assembled masses if he 
is dull — he must have brains to be an orator. 

Everywhere there is a lack of trained minds to do 
the work of the Master. According to a report com- 
ing from Lincoln, fifteen per cent of the Protestant 
churches in Nebraska are without ministers. Hands 
may be willing to relieve the sick, but if they lack the 
skill they are as useless as though not willing. The 

42 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 43 

same is true of those who would work with the mind ; 
training for skill must precede all effective work. The 
speaker must be a teacher but how can he teach if he 
has never been taught himself? How can he make 
others think if he has never thought for himself? 
Thought alone quickens thought. 

Mental Attitude. — The mental attitude of the 
speaker is not the same as that of the hearer. The 
speaker must clothe thought in words, his mood is 
creative. He must give heed to both form and sub- 
stance ; he is building. He might be likened to a car- 
penter fitting in his boards, paying careful attention 
to the material used and the form in which he leaves 
it. The listener, on the other hand, is in the receptive 
or passive mood; he takes to heart the truths pre- 
sented, he weighs the arguments, and criticises the 
theories. His mind fuses with his fellows' and he 
cheers with hearty approval or frowns with chilly 
displeasure, as he in turn agrees or disagrees with the 
speaker. His mind is in an attitude of dependence, it 
is receptive but not creative. The hearer may pose as 
critic, but the attitude of the critic is not creative, in 
fact it is directly opposed to creative work. 

The speaker must be bent upon leading, and so his 
mind must not grope; for no one likes a blind guide. 



44 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

His mind must be fearless and at the same time moved 
irresistibly toward a definite goal. Halting, hesitating, 
or doubting are fatal to successful leadership. The 
following clipped from a November number of the 
1904 Pathfinder shows what moral fearlessness is 
sometimes needed even in our own day, and how 
success often hinges upon the bold stand of the public 
speaker. 

" Rev. R. J. Campbell, the eloquent young preacher 
who occupies Dr. Parker's old City Temple pulpit in 
London, several weeks ago published an article in the 
National Review strongly criticising the British work- 
man for making such poor use of his spare time, wast- 
ing the bulk of his earnings on ale and tobacco, etc. 
He was challenged to repeat his indictment before a 
meeting of labor unionists, and he accepted. He was 
greeted by a hostile and angry gathering, but he 
bravely stood his ground and before he had finished 
he had won his audience over by his candid but sincere 
talk." 

Without the fearless spirit of an undaunted leader 
other excellent qualities may avail little in certain try- 
ing situations. This is why men of inferior ability 
in other respects so often displace able men as leaders. 
Narrowness intellectually favors prejudice, and makes 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 45 

its possessor assertive and positive. The masses fre- 
quently mistake the demonstrative positiveness of the 
narrow bigot for certain knowledge. They say : " He 
is so positive about it he must know." Though we in 
no way admire the forwardness of the incompetent, 
yet we know that a public speaker must in mind assume 
the independent and authoritative attitude of the lead- 
er. His mind must be actively creative. 

A man without a message has no right to talk, but 
he may have a message and still not be in the proper 
mood at all times to deliver it to an audience. Mr. R. 
C. Winthrop in speaking of Daniel Webster says that 
when he delivered his famous Reply to Hayne " he 
spoke in great excitement and with almost the aid of 
inspiration." In speaking of the same occasion Web- 
ster himself, said : "I felt as if everything I had ever 
heard or seen was floating before me in one grand 
panorama and I had little else to do than to reach up 
and cull a thunderbolt and hurl it at him." During the 
forty-eight hours while Lowell was composing his 
" Vision of Sir Launfal " he scarcely slept or ate, so 
keenly active was his mind and so absorbing was his 
mood. 

Powers of Observation.— No teacher impresses her 
lessons so effectively as experience does. Knowledge 



46 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

learned first hand is most definite. The poet's line 
throbs with his own pulse beat. His pictures are 
copies of those hanging in his own gallery of expe- 
rience. He has seen, that is why he can describe. The 
concrete is the electric button that sets the emotional 
battery loose. The speaker must reach the emotions, 
and his most effective means is in the concrete attain- 
ed through the power to describe, to picture. The 
eye must not only see color and form, but it must 
grasp relations, for good description presupposes a 
keen sense of proportion, not things alone but things 
in their right places. It is not merely in seeing " the 
flower in the crannied wall," but in seeing the uni- 
verse in the same flower that distinguishes a Tennyson 
from the ordinary man. Seeing, he sees. 

The imaginative element is not absent in good de- 
scription. Even history abounds in imagination, since 
the historian, using all facts at hand, still finds large 
gaps that must be filled in by imaginative material, 
for how could a whole battle be observed in its com- 
plete details even by any number of men? And who 
could ever tell the story of the dead? There is no 
such thing, I think, as unmixed fact. Fiction must serve 
as padding. Or, to use a figure, it must serve as carti- 
laginous cushions between the dry, hard bones of fact. 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 47 

Mr. Lewis in his " Principles of Success in Liter- 
ature " says : " Vigorous and effective minds habitual- 
ly deal with concrete images. This is notably the case 
with poets and great literates. Their vision is keener 
than that of other men. However rapid and remote 
their flight of thought, it is a succession of images, 
not of abstractions." While the imaginations of 
Shakespeare and Newton were both very active, the 
latter was toward things in the abstract, while the 
former was toward things in the concrete, and as a 
result Shakespeare became poet and Newton, philos- 
opher. The oratorical as well as the poetical mind 
moves in harmony with the feelings and fastens upon 
concrete facts in preference to abstact relations. The 
orator must be able to see things distinctly ; his powers 
of observation ought to be well developed through 
constant use. And yet he will not be able to make 
others see unless he can remember well and portray 
excellently. For the man who has made accurate and 
vivid observations at first hand, the task of moving 
masses from the platform becomes easy; for his ac- 
curate, vivid observations enable him to give a clear- 
ness and conciseness to his thought and language that 
win attention and admiration. 

Upon the topic " Consolidating Churches " in Ev- 



48 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

erybody's Magazine, April, 1904, Rev. N. D. Hillis 
said : " Instead of ten preachers there ought to be 
three. One of these should be the preacher or prophet- 
man who sees the truth clearly with his intellect; who 
feels the truth deeply, and who is able to state the truth 
simply, so that the old and young, the wise and igno- 
rant alike not only behold the cluster of God's fruit, 
but find the branches on which it hangs within easy 
reach." But to see into the future requires a close 
observation of the present. A prophet who cannot see 
clouds to-day will likely miss the forecast of the weath- 
er for to-morrow. A public speaker's work is so in- 
timately related to his immediate environment that he 
cannot be effective and still be wholly ignorant of it. 
To the minister comes the command : Know your sur- 
roundings; know your neighbors and their home life 
and the problems they are grappling with. 

So often clear statement is commensurate with viv- 
id, accurate observation ; for not a few facts but all of 
them determine authority. When we read John C. 
Calhoun's " Address to the People of the South," we are 
startled to find it such a prediction of the results of 
abolition as amply testifies that his eye was prophetic 
in its penetration of future events, his scent keen in 
detecting threatening danger, and his voice brave in 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 49 

proclaiming it. Franklin schooled himself to strength- 
en his powers of observation. He would pass a shop 
window, and then later attempt an enumeration of the 
articles in the window. Usually we see first and re- 
member longest the things we are most interested in. 
Cultivate broad sympathies and diversified interests, 
and the powers of observation will be strengthened 
thereby. All the senses, too, should be alive, sights, 
sounds, odors, — all should be seized and appropriated. 

When L. G. Broughton visited Luray Cave he was 
not satisfied with results at first, for the little tapers 
carried by the guide did not disclose much to him ; but 
after awhile the guide lit a magnesium light, and then 
he was fully satisfied. The reason why so many speak- 
ers cannot interest their audiences is because they as 
guides carry only small tapers of observation ; let them 
but chance to carry magnesium lights of brilliant mid- 
day observation and their audiences cannot choose but 
be interested, for the view of human life will be truly 
wonderful. 

Grasp of Generalities. — There are men who have a 
goodly share of that rarest of articles, common sense. 
Such men are not spoiled by education nor by a lack of 
it. I have seen boys act and think like men, and I 
have seen grown, collegiate-fledged men act like boys. 



50 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

Some people know a good bit without studying for it, 
while some others seem to study a good bit to know 
nothing about anything. This difference in men is due 
largely to their ability to grasp the fundamentals in life. 
To some men one thing is just as important as another, 
details are details to them, and they never grasp a 
sufficient number of details at any one time to see the 
principle underlying all. Professor Wilkinson in his 
" Masters of Pulpit Discourse," in speaking of Henry 
Ward Beecher, pays no little tribute to the excellent 
" common sense " of the great orator. He says : " But 
side by side with genius in Mr. Beecher sat another 
gift of his, worthy to be named as almost, if not quite, 
an equal power. I mean his common sense. Never did 
so much common sense mate with so much genius. . . 
. . The ballast of common sense was always sufficient 
to counterweigh what were else the over-buoyant 
headiness of his genius." 

The public speaker must have a good grasp of gen- 
eralities, for it is the only means by which he can 
properly estimate the relative value of particulars. 
Unless he have this grasp he cannot well see through 
the outer tangible form of things and events, reading 
quickly and unerringly their real import. The eye of 
the keen student of human nature stops not with the 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 51 

flesh and bones, but finds the heart of its man every 
time. Pope's oft-repeated truism, " The proper study 
of mankind is man," may well be phrased, The proper 
study of the public speaker is man. Just as the busi- 
ness man must be able to see a penny through a brick 
wall, so the public speaker must have an eye to 
pierce all outer acts and protestations and see clearly 
the motive, and then base the worth of deeds and acts 
upon that one determining factor of character. Other- 
wise he will make very grievous mistakes. Looked at 
from the point of comparison of one detail with an- 
other, the truth may be difficult to see, but when looked 
at in relation of particular to general principle, the 
truth is easily seen. Thus the speaker does not find 
it difficult to decide whether certain acts are right or 
wrong. And what is more important for his influence 
is, that, if governed by principle, his decisions will be 
consistent in themselves. 

Then the man who has a firm grasp of generalities 
is clearer in his thinking and more logical in his treat- 
ment of themes. Even unconsciously he rejects ex- 
traneous matter from his discourse. His hearers say, 
" He sticks to his text." His discourse has unity and 
is well balanced. 

The man who looks to principles will be a greater 



52 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

power morally, for firmness, constancy, and consis- 
tency, the characteristics of a principle-governed rather 
than an environment-moulded man, always win over 
both matter and men. A man may be eloquent now 
and then, but if he would be eloquent at all times, his 
life must be the fountain of his eloquence. Paul and 
Christ were eloquent in word because eloquent in life. 
Their lives were dominated by the great principles of 
Christianity. This body of truth will serve as frame- 
work for the speaker's habitual thought. Without it 
his discourse lacks support. 

Phrasal Power. — The great poets possess the high- 
est skill in casting thought into language forms. With 
them it is a fusing of thought and form in the furnace 
of poetic inspiration. The poet is not so much a phi- 
losopher or a thinker as an artist, a linguistic artist. 
He must deal primarily with language form. The 
thought he uses is most commonly the gift of the peo- 
ple. He must give the thought objective value. To 
do this he must know the wealth and power of the 
language in which he writes. Its melody and its subtle 
undertones he must feel. It is easy for some speakers, 
as for some poets, to clothe thought in language ; with 
others it is very difficult. No amount of training, it 
seems to me, can ever take the place of the natural 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 53 

phrasal power. A studied, halting speech is ever ir- 
ritating. 

The phrasal power of the writer is not the same as 
that of the public speaker, the former is more staid 
and classical ; the latter easy and flowing. The orator- 
ical temperament requires a ready, easy command of 
the speaker's vocabulary. There can be no waiting 
for words. They must come when needed. Some- 
times the words of a ready speaker seem to strive for 
the honor of being used. Such a speaker never wants 
for words, and indeed, for the right words, for they 
come to him better when speaking that when writing. 
Writing is too slow for his nimble wit. His mind is 
like some machines that need a good rate of speed to 
do good work. And so, whether the word needed be 
for force, melody, or volume, the speaker endowed 
with excellent phrasal power seems instinctively to 
know the proper word and unhesitatingly to use it. 
Like the artist who paints not by rule but by inspira- 
tion and thus creates the pictures that make rules pos- 
sible, so the orator, for his best work is done when he 
is least conscious of the words and phrases he uses. 
Instinctively, by force of genius, he moulds thought 
into matchless language forms. 



54 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

The Power to Describe. — The speaker wants to call 
up vivid, concrete images for the hearer, and to this 
end he must be able to describe well. When one wants 
to picture a scene in the country, a crowded street, or 
an odd face, one is in need of more than mere words. 
A bki*e catalogue of characteristics does not make good 
description, it requires a just proportion of the several 
parts also. The relation of the words, too, in sentence 
form must have due consideration, for the sentence 
form and the rhythm of the words will either add to 
the descriptive power of a passage or detract not a lit- 
tle from it. 

Your description will tell how you see things, for it 
will be colored by your own individuality. One man 
sees a thing in one way, another in a very different 
way. For a man's interest in a thing will enable him 
to see it in the light of that interest. Should a group 
of men watch the burning of a building no two will 
afterward describe it in the same way. One watches 
the flames, another the falling timbers, a third the 
efforts of the firemen, a fourth the grief of the hapless 
family made homeless by the fire. Thus the images 
trusted to the memories of these men are greatly 
different. 

Emotion lies at the beck of the concrete. The 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 55 

hearer realizes this concrete through the descriptive 
power of the speaker. It is true that the mind likes 
action, such as is had in narration ; but we must know 
that narration is a rapid succession of individual pic- 
tures or miniature descriptions. A moving picture is 
made up of a great number of snap-shots, so a narra- 
tive is made up of a great many bits of description. 
The concrete in action as well as in form, size, and 
color is to be realized through description. 

It is not always necessary to make a complete pic- 
ture, sometimes a mere sketch giving the barest outline 
is preferred to a labored, finished portrait. The artist 
must not confuse the objects in his picture, he must 
ever keep in mind his main object for the realization 
of which the others are brought in. So in description 
there must not be too much attention given to back- 
ground or to subordinate characters for fear the cen- 
tral, main figure, may be obscured. The artist must 
see or he cannot paint ; form, position and color must 
be noticed. There are no blind painters. A man who 
does not see cannot describe in sight images; how- 
ever, there are sound images also ; these he must hear. 
All his senses must be his obedient servants to gather 
material, and then he can phrase it all for his hearers. 

To be able to describe readily one must have a ready 



56 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

knowledge of colors, shapes and forms. To describe 
well one must know sounds, odors, and a thousand and 
one objects of this complex age of ours. Every trade, 
every profession has a large technical vocabulary, a 
part of which, at least, must be familiar if the speaker 
would describe intelligently to a mixed audience. 
Cooper succeeded in his sea tales better than Scott did, 
not because he was a better novelist, but because he 
had been a sailor and knew the terms he used and was 
acquainted with the sights and scenes he described. 
Scott had never been a sailor, and to him the sailors' 
language was not familiar. By investigation Dr. Gun- 
saulus has found out that a very great majority of our 
successful city preachers were born and reared in the 
country. One reason for their success, I heard him 
remark, is their ability to bring to wearied city people 
the calm, fresh, restful scenes of the country. These 
preachers, born in the country, and familiar from 
childhood with all the sights, sounds, and odors of 
country life, must be able by description to make these 
scenes in all their freshness and sweetness live again 
before their audiences. 

Emotional Power. — Feeling that is not felt is not 
likely to make others feel. The orator, unless he is 
sincere, can move few to tears by his crying. Emo- 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 57 

tional power, combined with power over language 
forms, gives to the orator's utterance a potency which 
painstaking can never reach. At a glance we know 
him to be in earnest, and though we differ from him, 
we will respect him. To be an ennobling, uplifting 
power, emotion must rest upon our sense of the good, 
the true, and the right. Beauty of form or beauty of 
color may arouse the aesthetic emotion. The loveli- 
ness, the grandeur of the world may stir the soul that 
loves the beautiful, and there may be a keen delight 
in the quiet charm of rural landscape, but this is not 
a moral emotion, it is something entirely different. 
The rapture inspired by paintings, music, or nature 
does not make for correct or incorrect character. But 
the emotion aroused by the contemplation of anything 
that involves our attitude toward the good, the true, or 
the right does very vitally concern our characters, 
morally. Coleridge and Shelley are not to be blamed 
if they lacked appreciation of music beyond a vague 
sense of melody common to most people. One may 
be a second-rate poet and have aesthetic emotion alone, 
but the public speaker must have moral and spiritual 
emotion. To him the moral and spiritual precepts 
must appeal powerfully, emotionally as well as intel- 
lectually. It is not enough that he know them, he can 



58 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

not make disciples, since he lacks one very essential 
element of leadership, emotional life. Leaders are 
passionate, earnest advocates. Emotion is necessary 
for this. It must be real, too. 

Do not imagine that you can force yourself into the 
feeling which you do not have. And, what is worse, 
do not mistake selfishness or egotism for true moral 
feeling. It may chance that you are angry with your 
transgressing neighbor from personal motives and not 
angry at the sin as sin. And then as a speaker do not 
imagine that feeling, moral or spiritual, is commen- 
surate with violence in gesture and vehemence and 
explosiveness in speech. It is not. If you feel what 
you say your audience will find it out, but they will 
best appreciate what you feel if you make it intelli- 
gible to them in the most natural way. 

It is exceedingly difficult for you to interest others 
in what you have no feelings for, no sympathy with. 
The cold heart and the knowing brain do not appre- 
ciate your troubles, you do not confide to them your 
trials, they can not spy out your secret pain or joy — 
they lack heart warmth — they cannot draw you as great 
leaders should. A bishop of souls must know some 
little, certainly, but he must feel much. To be a pulpit 
or platform magnet you must have the true moral and 



THE SPEAKER AS MIND. 59 

spiritual magnetism. If you have it not, get it by rub- 
bing up close to Christ, the great magnet, who having 
himself been lifted up draws all men unto him. Meas- 
ure your heart beat and you can tell pretty well the 
extent of your possible influence over the lives of men. 
The brain may polish the metal in man, but heart alone 
can melt it. Hearts must be melted and won ere 
masses can be moved to deeds. The orator's purpose 
is not accomplished unless it is crowned by the action 
of the hearer's will. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Speaker as Spirit. 

Outlook for Life. — The speaker's attitude toward 
the great problems of life may be designated as his 
philosophy or his outlook for life. Does he love the 
truth? Does he believe in humanity? Is he loyal to 
the nation and to his fellow-man? Is he an optimist 
or a pessimist? His answer to these questions the 
speaker cannot long keep from his hearers, even 
though he try to do so. If he think life a failure and 
believe in the dominion of misery, his pessimism will 
haunt every utterance. The ghosts of former great- 
ness will appear, in spite of his remonstrances, at 
every turn lamenting with wringing hands the decline 
of former strength and virtue. Even in the sweep and 
tone of his sentences one can feel the thwarting, de-» 
pressing power of his pessimism or the buoyant, ener- 
gizing influence of his optimism. It matters little 
what the speaker avowedly profess, his unconscious 
philosophy, the essential substance of his character, 
will so color his utterances that he cannot hide it. 
The greater the genius the less can he withhold his 
true beliefs. For genius is nothing unless it is sincere. 



60 



THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 61 

To some extent physical conditions may modify 
momentarily the strain of pulpit eloquence. In vigor- 
ous, healthy hours the speaker, from a superabundance 
of physical energy, may naturally take the optimist's 
view of life; while in hours of physical weakness, or 
when depressed by disappointment, he may utter the 
bitter, halting strains of pessimism. Men of great 
emotional capacity experience the extremes of joy and 
despair. And just because they are great and have 
these experiences they cannot avoid giving them ex- 
pression. 

According to Prof. Wilkinson, " every public 
speaker must have, consciously or unconsciously, some 
system of truth or theory to serve him as a sort of 
framework to his habitual thought." He cannot be 
constantly thinking out over and over again the basic 
principles of the life of the individual and of society. 
The public speaker should not become a fossil. If he 
is not ready to change as new light comes to him, he 
is dead. But he must have stability while he does hold 
to certain opinions. Emerson declares : " Men of 
character are the conscience of society to which they 
belong." But without a positive, helpful philosophy 
of life a man would be but a poor conscience to any 
society. Not long since a man said to me : " Think 



62 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

about it." " Why," said I, " your view has nothing in- 
viting in it, and so I prefer to avoid thinking about it, 
since you do not believe in an after life and hence have 
nothing attractive to offer. Why, pray, do you ask 
me to think about it? " 

We are so constructed emotionally, H. Ribot in 
his " Psychology of the Emotions " tells us, that two 
emotions can strive for the mastery at one time, but the 
tendency is to produce contradiction in us. This could 
result in nothing short of pain, and pain is an evidence 
of death unless it results in a greater rebound of joy. 
Long ago the great literary dictator, Samuel Johnson, 
catching by intuition the truth which modern psy- 
chologists have so elaborately proven in the labora- 
tories, said : " It is worth five thousand dollars a year 
to have the habit of looking on the bright side of 
things." Joy and gladness quicken the pulse beat, 
adding vigor and strength to the whole man. Many 
are the victims of despair. It lowers the temperature, 
weakens the pulse, thwarts hope and stabs life to the 
death. 

Unless the speaker's ultimate aim is an uplift toward 
life and light he has no worthy message for humanity. 
The time he takes from an audience is worse than 
stolen; he not only robs them of time but he injects 



THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 63 

deadly venom into their veins. No pessimist should 
have standing room in pulpit or upon platform. 
Speech, to be effective, must have a soul and that soul 
must be buoyant, hopeful, optimistic. Rev. John S. 
Macintosh, in " The White Sunlight of Potent Words," 
insists upon it that truth and nothing else is the es- 
sential of eloquence. Truth must be, then, the founda- 
tion in character building, the ground-plane in every 
painting of future conditions. Every outlook for life 
that has truth as its ground-plane places an ultimately 
triumphing, happy man in the center of the view as 
the center of attraction with a background made aglow 
by the victorious rays of goodness and perfection. 
Error may hang as a blinding fog, obstructing the out- 
ward-reaching sweep of man's prophetic eye ; sin may 
blacken, as the mildew or the blight, the fruit of his 
labors ; and death may terrorize him with its appalling 
threat and its fierce, fiery arrows from out of the 
inky west; though this only for a short time, — since 
the orator, who has his feet firmly planted upon the 
foreground, truth, his heart-string securely tied to 
frightened, suffering, hoping humanity, and his eye 
fixed upon the optimism of the rosy eastern hills, can 
not fail to lift and inspire any audience worth address- 
ing. 



64 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

Religious Qualifications. — First of all qualifications 
from the religious point of view a public speaker 
should have a keen sense of God's presence. Nothing, 
it seems to me, will make a speaker so careful and, at 
the same time, so earnest as this feeling. Even de- 
based men will at times refrain from profanity in the 
presence of a minister of the Gospel. Is it perhaps 
because they instinctively feel themselves, too, in the 
near presence of God, since the minister himself feels 
this nearness to the Creator? It is certainly true that 
we can not get away from our real character, and if 
the speaker feels this presence of God keenly, he will 
be able to impart somewhat of it to his hearers. 

Prof. Wilkinson does not think Henry Ward Beech- 
er a true type of the Christian minister, since he felt so 
keenly the independence of the " I." This is what he 
says : " Mr. Beecher in the very act of deducing his 
definition of preaching, unconsciously illustrated the 
insubordinate instinct and habit of his own mind. The 
master idea of obedience accordingly he missed. He 
did not find it, because he did not bring it." Though a 
great pulpit orator, Mr. Beecher does not give evidence 
of this keen sense of God's nearness, for he exalts self 
too much. One would expect humility instead of 
pride. Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:5," We preach not our- 



THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 65 

selves but Christ Jesus." Thus this feeling of close 
association will not exalt self but Christ. It will urge 
the speaker on to plain duty. In 1 Cor. 9: 16, Paul 
says : " Though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to 
glory ; woe is me if I preach not the Gospel, necessity 
is laid upon me." The preacher who feels near God 
will not think of preaching self or selfhood or utility 
or anything except the Gospel of Christ. It is thus 
that this one all-absorbing consciousness will give 
unity to every discourse, for there will then be one, all- 
pervading motive. 

Then, too, this consciousness of God's immediate 
presence becomes an evidence of the speaker's loyalty 
to truth. It serves him as a prompter to champion the 
cause of the good and the true. He feels as one sent. 
And it serves him as reward for services well per- 
formed. Thus ever accompanied, why should the 
speaker not succeed? If not thus supported by God's 
conscious presence, what can man accomplish? Cer- 
tainly nothing. 

In the second place, the public speaker should have 
an abiding faith. It is faith that will avail in times of 
darkness. Trust is essential to any fixed course. 
When men cease to trust the banks, business staggers 
and falls. When wife distrusts husband, or husband, 



66 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

wife, the fire goes out upon the hearth and home ties 
break. When citizen is faithless to citizen, patriotism 
vanishes and nationality dies. When man loses faith 
in God, immortal glory fades and hollow-eyed death 
frightens man into despair. The speaker who lacks 
faith will lack firmness. In doubt there is weakness. 
Not long since I heard a lecturer who came far short 
of the hearers' expectation, and I asked his agency why 
they had recommended him so highly. " Why," said 
the Bureau, " he did give good lectures until last year 
when he cut loose from his church, and now he seems 
to be all at sea ; he has no message, everywhere he goes 
it is the same complaint." Nothing can permanently 
take the place of the faith that abides. 

In the third place, the speaker must have the spirit 
of helpfulness toward humanity. It is the helpful 
spirit, the spirit that awakens a responsive echo in the 
hearts of others. Nothing kindles into action like 
sympathy. Men may sneer and scold and denounce 
without ever inciting toward the good. Little real 
sympathy is ever lost upon the human heart. If you 
give but a cup of cold water in the spirit of helpful- 
ness it will return in bucketfuls to replenish the pool 
at the fountain. 

We can stand a good deal of digging around loose 



THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 67 

teeth, a good deal of scraping and probing of hollow 
ones, all because we feel the dentist is doing us good. 
We can bare the boil to the thrust of the lance and 
swallow without a shiver the bitter pill, all because we 
know it is good for the body, and that the physician 
does it in the spirit of helpfulness. Let there be the 
least doubt about this last, even let there be the least 
shadow of heartlessness in his sincerity of purpose, 
and our bile boils over at every pill, we faint at every 
thrust of the surgeon's knife. So, too, with the speak- 
er if he would cure society of its vice and folly; he 
must at times use knife and pill, but it must always be 
in the spirit of helpfulness; no other aim can suffice. 
If he laughs without this ultimate aim he is worse than 
the buffoon. The asylum were a mild place for him 
who can do naught but inject the quinine of despair 
with no other aim than that it shall leave the mouth 
bitter and the heart sick. 

In an address to the graduates on commencement 
time at the National School of Elocution and Oratory 
in Philadelphia, Henry Ward Beecher said a speaker 
must have a " kindly sympathy," and five years later 
the Rev. John S. Macintosh, upon a similar occasion, 
at the same place, said by way of introduction to his 
lecture: " For me it is a pure, strong joy to face my 



68 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

bright and stirring theme, and to front this inspiriting 
throng." Thus it ought to be a source of inspiration 
to every speaker to face his audience and to catch the 
gleam from glowing eyes. A speaker must get into 
sympathy with humanity if he would lift them by his 
speech; he must believe in men, too, in their pos- 
sibilities of good. 

The fraternal feeling eliminates caste and ties all 
men together. The speaker must know no high or low 
in his audience. A man is a man ; a soul, a soul ; and 
one in the Infinite's longing is the same as another. 
To be absolutely or universally sympathetic the speaker 
cannot discriminate for accidents of birth or environ- 
ment. "A man's a man for a' that." This is the 
Christ spirit. His teaching is comprehended in Mark 
10 : 43, " But whosoever will be greatest among you 
let him be your minister." He is great who renders 
to his fellows great service. The speaker must be a 
servant in the true sense of ministering to the highest 
need of his audience. His attitude toward God must 
be one of abiding faith; his attitude toward man, one 
of sympathy, fraternity, service. Around it all the 
atmosphere of God's presence must hover. 

Personality. — By the word personality I mean to 
sum up all the peculiarities of a man that go to dis- 



THE SPEAKER AS SPIRIT. 69 

tinguish him from the mass of men with whom he as- 
sociates. Washington, Newton and Burns are not like 
other men, neither are we ourselves ; but perchance our 
own characteristics are not very great, and so we are 
not very sharply differentiated from the rest of man- 
kind. The oddities of Washington and Burns are go- 
ing to live ; will ours ? They will, providing ours are 
to the same degree attractive and beneficial. So won- 
derful was the personal address of the Great Pacifi- 
cator, Henry Clay, that his bitterest enemies, when 
brought face to face with him, changed entirely. A 
man becomes popular to the extent that his personality 
contains the power to allure and win the hearts of 
men. A man's name lives as a cherished remembrance 
to the extent that his personality is a contribution to 
the welfare of the race. Reputation whose foundation 
is in the power to allure, may dazzle; but character 
whose strength is in stable worth, alone, possesses the 
power to create sincere and lasting admiration. Then 
fortunate, indeed, is the speaker whose natural talent 
and whose conscious training fit him for giving to his 
hearers something of real worth, a substance solid and 
enduring. 



CHAPTER VL 
The Audience. 

Audiences Differ. — Though audiences may be di- 
vided into various classes, yet they all have many 
things in common. Some may fuse more readily than 
others, but when once fused, they act alike. From 
force of local coloring, audiences are different in 
mental capacity, in ideals, and in motives. A speech 
judged from the race-prejudice of a typical South- 
erner may have an opposite effect from the one 
judged from the elated mood of the newly-fledged, 
black voter. What may draw peal upon peal of 
laughter from a stupid, slow-witted audience may re- 
ceive only malicious scorn from a lofty-minded, 
haughty-bearing, intelligent audience. 

Audience Fusing. — The audience, to start with, is a 
vast mixture of individual minds, each hugging closely 
his heavy pack of preferences and preconceived opin- 
ions. The orator's task, first of all, is to get these 
various minds into a state wherein the mood shall be 
common, so that the audience may think and feel as 
one man, and then they will be able to act as one man, 
too. 

70 



THE AUDIENCE. 71 

Public speaking is not conversation, since as soon 
as the individuals are fused we have the audience, and 
conversation passes into the public address. If public 
speaking- stoop to conversation, the audience is broken 
into individuals and the audience as such ceases to 
exist. 

To fuse an audience it is necessary to find a common 
ground ; some thought, some emotion, must dominate ; 
the orator becomes merely the mouthpiece; what he 
utters is not questioned, it is seized and mothered by 
every listener. Under favorable conditions everyone 
in the audience imagines he has himself harbored the 
sentiment and achieved the thought of the speaker, 
and if he were standing up there now in the speaker's 
stead he would say the same thing. 

The audience may assist in this process of fusing by 
each individual remaining in a state of passivity. Ex- 
pectancy must not become too decidedly positive or it 
may even be a hinderance to audience fusing. 

Audience Characteristics. — The question of the per- 
sonality of an audience has been somewhat scientific- 
ally treated by Mr. Diall in a little book entitled " The 
Psychology of the Aggregate Mind of an Audience." 
He has carefully compiled answers from a number of 
public speakers and finds prevalent the belief in the 



72 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

existence of what he terms an " aggregate mind," or 
the mind of an audience. This is not the mind of the 
individual, but the common factors of the individual 
minds working in harmony under the direction of a 
leader, the speaker. All of us have wondered why a 
crowd acts differently than individual men do. Why 
will a man, calm and sedate, do that, when in a crowd, 
which he would not do if alone? The answer is, that 
while in the crowd he has allowed his mind to fuse 
with his fellows' and the common mind is his own for 
the time being. He vociferously assents to the sug- 
gestions of the speaker. The eloquent orator has all 
of his hearers spellbound, by which we mean that they 
submit to his way of thinking — to his suggestions, his 
will is theirs. Mr. Diall's set definition of this mind 
of an audience is as follows : " An aggregate mind is 
a mental phenomenon developed when a group of in- 
dividual minds is experiencing the same train of men- 
tal states in unison, brought about by the suggestion 
of a leader or speaker." Without the leader or speaker 
there could be no union of individual minds. If this 
union of mind is not had, the speaker will find his 
work useless. The first effort of the speaker must 
then be to fuse the individual minds in his audience. 
Speakers in general agree that the instincts wield a 



THE AUDIENCE. 73 

powerful influence over the fused mind of an audi- 
ence. The instincts generally found are: imitation, 
emulation, sympathy, fear, acquisitiveness, play, cu- 
riosity, sociability, shyness, shame, secretiveness, and 
love. To be able to move an audience demands that 
the orator can skillfully play upon these instincts. 
For when minds act in unison some of these instincts 
will likely dominate. The noted lecturer, Mr. Wend- 
ling, believes " The instincts form an important basis 
for an oration and are a large element in an aggre- 
gate mind — an element the speaker must not over- 
look." 

Closely related to the instincts, and by some psy- 
chologists believed to grow out of them, are the emo- 
tions. These, too, form a powerful factor in the ag- 
gregate mind. Mr. James Hedley, a lecturer of con- 
siderable note, declares " The emotions play a large 
part — a dangerously large part — in an aggregate 
mind." Mr. Leland Powers asserts the same when he 
says: "The emotions are one of the chief character- 
istics of the aggregate mind." Since it is incumbent 
upon the speaker to suggest the train of mind activity 
for the audience, it becomes necessary that he have 
emotional power, as previously shown, and also that 



74 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

he know how to make it effective in guiding the fused 
mind along emotional paths. 

After the instincts and emotions in the common 
mind is found imagination. The imagination of the 
child is very active. The language of men in the early 
stages of civilization is filled with imaginative expres- 
sions. The concrete is nearer the early, untutored 
mind than the abstract is. So we can readily see why 
this should be counted as one of the elements of the 
mind of an audience. A host of experienced public 
speakers might be quoted here to sustain this line of 
thought, but I give only one quotation and it is from 
Mr. Diall's book mentioned above. " The imagina- 
tions," says Mr. Hedley, " play a very large part in the 
aggregate mind. When aroused, the imagination 
fancies things are better than they really are. When 
pleased, it exaggerates to the advantage of the speak- 
er." 

An audience does not reason much. Burk's master- 
ful argument on " Conciliation with America " drove 
nearly all of the members out of the House of Com- 
mons. Rufus Choate thinks " no thought too deep or 
subtle to give to an audience if it is given in the proper 
way. But it must be given in anecdote, telling illustra- 
tion, stinging epithet, or sparkling truism, and never 



THE AUDIENCE. 75 

in a logical, abstract shape." In audiences reasoning 
is at a low ebb. Men reason when alone. 

The great speeches of the time have moved hearers 
to action. Demosthenes succeeded in rousing the 
Greeks against Philip of Macedonia, Cicero the senate 
against Catiline, and Savanorola induced men and 
women to denounce sin. American statesmen have not 
striven in vain, for the greatness of our country points 
unmistakably to the potency of her orators. Yet most 
generally the volitional element is small in the aggre- 
gate mind. The act of the will is individual, not very 
often is it very active in a fused audience. The ul- 
timate aim of oratory is action of the individual will, 
unless it be to precipitate action of the entire audience 
in which the laws of the mob apply. 

Public speakers do not all think of their audiences un- 
der the same images. An audience has been compared 
to a woman, a creature half woman and half tiger, and 
to a huge pink face that smiles, frowns, weeps and 
quivers. Mr. Leland Powers very definitely sets forth 
the characteristics of the aggregate mind of an audi- 
ence as follows : " The common characteristics of the 
aggregate mind are youthfulness, credulity, optimism, 
love of justice and fair play, belief in ideals, such ele- 
ments and qualities which are dominant in the healthy 



76 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

youth of sixteen or twenty years of age." An audi- 
ence never grows old. 

The aggregate mind, according to such men as Ice- 
land Powers, James Hedley, C. C. McCabe and Emory 
Haynes, is less discriminating, less intellectual but 
more idealistic than the individual mind. And the 
larger the audience the lower the plane of the audi- 
ence mind, and the easier the chance for success to the 
orator. This is the reason, doubtless, why public 
speakers prefer to speak to crowded houses. Men 
who in everyday life are able to throw off a thousand 
suggestions frequently cannot throw off the sugges- 
tions of the orator when the audience is large and well 
fused. 

The Speaker's Responsibility. — It takes time to fuse 
an audience. It takes tact on the part of the speaker, 
too. But when once fused the responsibility of the 
speaker becomes very great, indeed. He can then 
mould as he likes. Upon his conscience will rest the 
results. If led astray, the speaker must be censured. 
That the mob should rush off to destroy the homes of 
Brutus and Cassius and rouse Rome with their out- 
rages none but Antony need answer for, he alone is 
responsible. A leader may be zealous beyond legit- 
imate bounds and thus disgrace, not only himself, but 



THE AUDIENCE. 77 

his audience as well. On the other hand the oppor- 
tunity offered the speaker for good can scarcely be es- 
timated. If he can influence for evil he can also in- 
fluence for good if he so desire. Hence from the 
speaker's responsibility in the public address, it is in- 
cumbent upon him that he study his audience so as to 
fuse it as quickly as possible and then when fused to 
give it the proper suggestions, to lead it, like a general 
might a strong, united army, to the attack of vice and 
sin. 

Like fabled iEolus who held in his mountain cave 
all winds, loosing them as he saw fit, so the orator 
from the pent-up passions of the fused audience can 
let loose the death-dealing cyclone of mob violence or 
the gentle breeze of kindly sympathy. Let the orator 
be sure his influence is for good. 

A Visible Factor. — An audience is a visible factor 
in spoken discourse. A writer or an editor never has 
a chance to see his audience, it is always invisible, so 
it can wield only an imaginative part in the actual 
composition of the essay, poem, or book. Not so with 
the speaker. His last audience and the struggle he had 
to master it, or the new light it threw upon his theme, 
are all vividly recalled even while he prepares for his 
next address. And then when the moment really 



78 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

comes, and he opens his mouth and gives his message, 
he watches every mood closely, changing here and 
there for better effect not only the subject matter but 
also his manner of delivery. With his audience 
right before him, instant adaptation to the audience 
may take place. Such adaptation, however, is un- 
known to the author or editor. Once a year the edi- 
tor does, indeed, feel the pulse of his readers by dun- 
ning them for renewals to his paper, but even this 
pulse-timing is wholly unsatisfactory, because the time 
elapsing from the publication of his work until he gets 
results from his readers is so long that he can profit 
little by it. The orator has the advantage of witness- 
ing the effect of his thought and of knowing immedi- 
ately the result of his effort. Though he may have 
made a mistake in the first part of his address, it may 
even yet, when he is half through his speech, be largely 
retrieved if he can tactfully win his audience and rule 
them even for a short time. An audience will be slow 
to censure the speaker who has had an iron heel upon 
their throats. They will not soon rebel against the 
orator who has held them spellbound beneath the mag- 
ic wand of his eloquence, even though the reign may 
have been for a short time only. 



THE AUDIENCE. 79 

Winning the Ears of the Audience. — Where an 
audience is hostile to the message of the speaker there 
is evident need of the speaker's adjustment to his 
environment. First of all he must, some way or other, 
create a mutual ground of sympathy, or he can ac- 
complish nothing. Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward 
Beecher were masters in the art of winning hostile 
audiences. Dr. A. A. Willits in Talent, June, 1904, 
tells us, in reminiscent mood, some of his experiences 
in this most difficult of tasks. Some apt story of lo- 
cal coloring frequently helped the orator to get hold 
of his audiences at the beginning. If the speaker 
can only get the loan of the ears of his hearers to 
start with, he may easily end by possessing their 
hearts. If he does not, he will die penniless, sure. 

Mr. Sheppard says, " An audience is as testy as an 
individual. Never rub the face of an audience the 
wrong way, unless, indeed, you have a cause to argue 
with it, or an appeal to make for an unpopular cause. ,, 

The selection of such material as by its very local 
nature must interest the particular audience was very 
noticeable in Mr. Beecher's speeches delivered in Eng- 
land during the Civil War. At Manchester he dis- 
cussed the effects of slavery on manufacturing in- 
terests; in Edinburg, a literary center, he spoke up- 



80 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

on the history and philosophy of slavery. The ref- 
erence to local events or local interests, when it can 
be done, aids in interesting an audience. It is fre- 
quently the only means by which a speaker can readily 
and effectively fuse his audience; because it is the 
only thing upon which the minds of the audience un- 
reservedly agree, and by such an adroit local reference 
the speaker is able to throw them out of their set 
mood of opposition, or their critical attitude toward 
him. Before his local hit or trite saying or apt story 
the orator can feel the icy, critical temperature of the 
hearers ; after the hit their hearts beat normal ; a rosy 
flush on the face tells him he has won — he has their 
ears and now he may win their hearts. 

The Audience Responsive. — Mr. Bok, the editor of 
the Ladies' Home Journal, thinks an audience can 
help or hinder a speaker to the best presentation of 
his theme. He says: "A speaker may. come upon the 
platform with the very best of intention in the world 
to interest his audience, and if that audience is cold 
as a block of ice, it naturally has its effect upon him." 
Unless the audience respond to the efforts of the 
speaker, the result is bound to be unsatisfactory to 
both speaker and audience. Indeed, there is no good 
reason why a speaker should be expected to do all 



THE AUDIENCE. 81 

of the work. Giving up energy to make a success 
of a discourse should be shared by the audience. Mr. 
Sheppard tells us that English audiences do this more 
generally than American audiences do. The former 
seem to feel somewhat more the burden of making a 
success of the meeting. 

Not only, therefore, does the orator act upon the 
audience, but he is in turn acted upon by it. The 
response of the audience is invariably met with great- 
er efforts on the part of the speaker, and thus ef- 
fects are secured which could not otherwise be had. 
As long as the audience sullenly holds itself aloof, re- 
fusing attention and sympathy, so long will the orator 
be baffled — they will never know him at his best. 

When the audience gives sympathy, understanding, 
and vital outreach, then the speaker can accomplish 
something. The message will then be worth much to 
both audience and speaker. You must not imagine 
that the speaker gets no more out of a good discourse 
than he does out of a poor one — he does, much more. 
It is this outreach of the audience that makes a speak- 
er outdo his former efforts. 

Miss Ida Benfy Judd in Talent, June, 1904, says: 
" In March of this year one evening I had an audience 
of trained minds and of experienced men and women 



82 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

and I learned so much as I stood before them that it 
will take me weeks to embody for other audiences all 
the suggestions that this one gave me. I mean that 
this audience was so vital, so suggestive and so well 
fused that as I spoke the lines to them, great flashes 
of meaning came to me, meaning so much deeper and 
richer and bigger than I had ever felt in the same lines 
before, that for several days after the performance I 
was like one born in a new world." Only under the 
encouraging eyes of a pleased audience can an orator 
give expression to the noblest thoughts, only then 
can he have his sublimest conceptions, then of all 
times does his poetic eye behold scenes never painted 
on canvas, and his soul swells with aspirations known 
only to eloquence. 

The Best Listener. — Who is the best listener in the 
audience ? Is it the man with a stoop in his shoulders, 
a clear, steel-gray, all-seeing eye, an ear as sharp 
as a cat's, who always carries his pencils and note- 
books with him and who is always so anxious to take 
down what you say ? I think not, for he is too eager, 
he is too busy with his notes, too anxious to have you 
say something, his very eagerness makes one nervous. 

" The trained mind alone," says Miss Judd, " can 
not make the ideal audience ; it is the trained and ex- 



THE AUDIENCE. 83 

perienced mind that we long for, but if we can have 
but one quality then the experienced mind is more 
desirable than even intellectual perception only." It 
is very difficult to talk to an audience of children be- 
cause their experience is so meager; there is so little 
they appreciate, and the little knowledge they do 
possess is so often not common to the whole class 
or audience of them you are addressing. 

The normal, wholesome, all-around, open-minded 
person makes the best listener. To help the speak- 
er one must not listen to criticise. If one is busy 
intellectually one cannot fuse in mind with his fel- 
lows. An audience of newspaper reporters, all tak- 
ing the speech would be a sorry audience for an ora- 
tor to address. Imagine a speaker eloquent with such 
hearers ! The hearer must be normal, for if he be 
abnormal his fellows must have the identical ailment 
or he can not fuse with them. The general, healthy 
human is optimistic, and unless the listener be such he 
detracts from possible audience effects. The greater 
the experience of the listener the easier it is for the 
speaker to reach a sympathetic chord in him. And 
if he is not open-minded he will not yield himself to 
the suggestions of the speaker. Benjamin Franklin 
tells us how he once went to hear the great preacher, 



84 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

Whitefield, plead for contributions to some charitable 
institution, and though he had gone with the de- 
termination to give nothing whatever, he ended by 
emptying his pockets into the contribution box when it 
was passed. There was something about Franklin 
that made him a good listener in spite of himself. 
What was it? He was open-minded, wholesome; and 
an all-around man. 



CHAPTER VII. 
The Discourse. 

Unity in Discourse. — About the first thing a speak- 
er has to learn is to maintain the unity of his dis- 
course. At first it may seem a hard demand to make 
upon a speaker that all he says shall be upon one 
definite subject; but it is, nevertheless, a reasonable 
demand; for only thus can his hearers secure the 
desired benefit from his discourse. 

Unity demands that the purpose of the speaker be 
single and vivid, and that the discourse be organic. 
In fact, without a single, vivid purpose of the author, 
as revealed in his discourse, there could scarcely be 
said to be wholeness or completeness of treatment, 
which the term organic necessarily demands. 

If the speaker has a single purpose, he will be 
spared many temptations to drag into his discourse 
extraneous matter. At a glance he will see that what 
he is strongly inclined to say is, in fact, foreign to 
his subject; and that its introduction would mar the 
unity of his discourse. As with the marksman, the 
smaller the mark, the more accurate the aim ; so with 

85 



86 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

the speaker, the smaller the subject, the greater the 
care in the selection of matter. But this is in it- 
self a decided advantage to the speaker as well as to 
the audience. For singleness of aim will give the 
speaker the opportunity of mastering some one line of 
thought, and when he has once mastered it, he will 
then be as good as the best in that particular field. 
When once he has mastered one thing, however small 
it may be, he has reached the point where he can 
choose his material independently, selecting that only 
which best serves his purpose. 

The work of a speaker relative to his subject is 
rather, to speak by illustration, to be compared to 
the man who grubs than the man who blazes. The 
latter knocks the bark off of a tree here and there, 
never looking whether or not the tree is large or small ; 
the former picks out a small tree, one that he thinks 
about his size, and then cuts and digs until the tree 
is felled. From all sides the grubber attacks his 
tree, and every root is dug up. So the speaker who 
allows unity to control him, attacks his subject from 
all available sides, and thoroughly exhausts every 
source of knowledge. 

The discourse that shows vividness does not lack 
personality. The speaker knows what he wants to 



THE DISCOURSE. 87 

accomplish, he understands how to accomplish it, and 
thus he becomes independent, showing his personality 
in originality of thought and of language forms. His 
work is stamped as forged in the heat of one heart 
and brain. It belongs to him, no one else can claim 
it. 

The unity of discourse forbids that the speaker 
trust much to impulse. That is too apt to lead astray. 
New thought is attractive. Impulse would insert it, 
but logic may very likely reject it, because foreign 
to the subject under treatment. He who allows place 
to matter because it is new or striking, without first 
relentlessly testing it by its logical relation to his 
theme, will soon find himself hopelessly lost in hap- 
hazard thinking. If a speaker can not tell why a 
certain thing should be said under a given topic, he 
had better not say it there. He may find a good place 
for it somewhere else. All extra matter should be 
cut out, at whatever the cost to impulse. 

To secure unity, select familiar themes and find 
out all you can about them before trying to speak upon 
them. An outline made rigidly logical will assist 
much, because it helps to get things close together, 
where likeness and difference are easily discerned. 
Outlining will not eliminate all wandering from the 



88 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

text. Writing out and committing to memory an 
occasional address will also aid in securing unity. 
Some of our faults appear to us only after we have 
become very familiar with our style of writing or 
speaking. 

A rambling speaker loses much by not sticking to 
his text, since in sacrificing unity he loses strength- 
He is apt to repeat until he has so diluted his thought 
that it ceases to taste well. Throughout the entire 
discourse the speaker should be conscious of hitting 
his theme. To do this it is not necessary to repeat 
it every other sentence. Repetitions should not be 
indulged in unless some new thought is thus brought 
forward. To preach from a chapter inclines to the 
disconnected, rambling talk, wherein many good things 
may be said, but because they are not connected, they 
do not reinforce each other, as is the case where 
unity of discourse prevails. If the world showed us 
no order, no arrangement, we might justly conclude 
chaos to be the highest divinity. Much the same is 
true of the address wherein we can discover no system, 
no unity; chaos must have been the dominant prin- 
ciple of the mind that created it. Do not hesitate 
to crop your speech. Much that you think good may 
not pertain to your theme. Cut it out; pruning 



THE DISCOURSE. 89 

strengthens the tree, enlarges the fruit, enriches the 
flavor i so it is with your public address. 

Finding a Theme. — The speaker must learn to se- 
lect the topics upon which he speaks. It is true that 
many occasions will necessarily place limitations upon 
the choice, yet at the same time ability to select must 
be developed if efficiency is to be reached. Christ- 
mas time, Easter and funeral occasions will all im- 
mediately limit the range of topics, but they each 
leave room for choice ; and not only leave room for it, 
but also necessitate it ; just the same as does the more 
general occasion, only the latter grants a larger scope 
from which to select. 

There are times when the speaker may be relieved 
of the duty of selecting his topic by being requested 
to speak upon a certain theme. If he has spoken 
upon the subject when the one making the request 
was a listener in the audience, he may consider himself 
justified in complying with the request, provided he 
deems it a fit subject for the given audience upon 
the indicated occasion. However, if he has never 
spoken upon the subject, the speaker had better care- 
fully consider before complying, for the request may 
have had motives which it would not be wise for him 
to gratify. I have known critics to make such re- 



90 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

quests merely for purposes of criticism. I do not 
deem it the business of a speaker to pose for criticism ; 
and it is better for him to avoid occasions for it, if he 
can do so. A good friend of yours may tell you what 
to speak upon, and at times his choice may be better 
than your own. It is all right to get all the help you 
can consistently while you still hold the deciding vote 
in the matter. Do not let the impression get out that 
you have run out of subjects; that will only weaken 
your hold upon your audience. 

Somehow or other the speaker ought to feel that 
the subject he has must be given now, that it is just 
the subject for the present occasion, and if he does 
not give it now he can not give it later. There is 
something wrong somewhere when a speaker feels that 
his subject or his address is too good for the audi- 
ence. I am inclined to think the speaker has made 
a mistake in his selection. But the lamentable thing 
about it is that a speaker who feels that way once is 
likely to feel that same way too often, for he is, in 
all probability, sadly wanting in judgment in so far 
as selecting subjects is concerned. As a matter of 
fact, no subject is too good for any audience; it may 
not be appropriate for the occasion or for the hear- 
ers, because of the nature of its subject matter, but it 



THE DISCOURSE. 91 

can not be too good nor too well delivered. It is the 
secret of some speakers' power that they give their 
best to the smallest audiences. When audiences are 
small the speaker must seek that spur or inspiration 
from his own thought which he may otherwise get 
from the sympathy of a large audience. 

It may not be amiss here to show how a theme 
sometimes comes to an orator. In Philadelphia the 
Rev. John S. Macintosh gave an address entitled 
" The White Sunlight of Potent Words." The fol- 
lowing is his introductory explanation of his theme: 
" This striking phrase ' The White Sunlight of Potent 
Words ' occurs in one of his books who himself was no 
mean sun in the literary world, whose words were 
truly, forces; I mean that freshest and most striking 
instance of Atavism which our English-speaking na- 
tion has ever studied, Carlyle's worshipful portraiture 
of his strong-souled, true-tongued, clean-handed, God- 
fearing father. As the stern father depicts so vivid- 
ly his sterner sire, he presents him to us as one who 
loved the white sunlight of exact truth and told his 
own clear thoughts in potent words. As I read them 
the terms engraved themselves upon my memory, and 
as I searched for my subject they flashed back with 



92 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

light and furnished me with the theme desired — one 
not, perchance, inappropriate to this occasion." 

In the Prelude to the First Part of his " Vision 
of Sir Launfal " Lowell has touched upon this sub- 
ject. His lines are about the musician, however, yet 
they apply equally well to the orator in his choice of 
a theme. 

" Over the keys the musing organist, 
Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
First lets his fingers wander as they list 
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay; 
Then as the touch of his loved instrument 
Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flashes sent 
Along the wavering vista of his dream." 

Thus, too, the orator may have his subject first but 
faintly suggested, it may be perchance by something 
he hears or reads. As time goes by his theme takes 
form, growing clearer and more definite, until at 
last it outlines itself in scope and finishes by cloth- 
ing itself in the various forms of amplification. A. 
T. Pierson in his " Divine Art of Preaching " tells 
how one develops a theme in the following : " You 
have a thought to-day; you make a record of it; you 
draw it out somewhat in a memorandum and lay it 
aside. A month hence you take up your memoranda, 
and you find that the thought you had has unconscious- 



THE DISCOURSE. 93 

ly matured. You have been incubating your own 
conception and it is growing toward completeness." 
To give your theme a chance to mature, it should be 
selected as early as possible. Meditation upon a sub- 
ject from time to time will give better results than 
a single period of study, for when the subject is re- 
called it is each time considered from a new view 
point; and just as a dwelling place appears different 
when viewed from different points of the compass, 
so a theme takes different forms in the mind as it is 
viewed from various angles. 

In the selection of themes for sermons I believe 
no method more fruitful than the reading of scripture. 
As you read, themes come to you. The same is true 
to some extent in reading good literature. In looking 
over a list of subjects or themes one can often fix 
upon what suits. In all your reading and study have 
your eyes open for themes, and as they come to you 
write them down and file them away. They will serve 
your purpose sometime later. Do not imagine they 
must all be used at once or they are useless. Then, 
too, do not imagine that once using exhausts a theme 
for all time. The same subject worked over and given 
to another audience will do you good, and it may 
possibly be the best message you could bring to that 



94 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

audience at that time. So, whether your theme be new 
or old to you, see to it that you decide what the theme 
shall be as soon as you can do so. 

Discourse as Sermon. — The sermon is only one of 
the many forms into which spoken discourse is cast. 
So varied are the interests of our age that no one 
form of public discourse could satisfy our demands. 
The lawyer makes his plea for justice, the statesman 
for better government, the social reformer for cleaner 
morals, the educator for better methods of instruc- 
tion, the popular lecturer talks to entertain and in- 
struct, the preacher preaches Christ and we call his 
address a sermon. What is its theme? What is its 
character ? What are its limitations ? Dr. A. A. Wil- 
lits says : " He does a good work who contributes to 
the pure and innocent recreations of men. He does 
a better work, no doubt, who aids their intellectual 
development. But he does the grandest work for 
humanity who imparts moral ideas, ideas that awaken 
gratitude, contentment, cheerfulness, kindness, and 
beneficence ; thoughts that move to generous and noble 
deeds, that kindle loftier aspiration in the soul and 
that lead to higher walks in life." But Dr. Willits 
had the popular lecturer in mind when he wrote this, 
he was not thinking of preaching. 



THE DISCOURSE. 95 

It is readily seen that the sermon must necessarily 
be modified by the conception of its aim or purpose. 
What is the preaching for? Henry Ward Beecher 
held up the ideal of " reconstructed manhood " as the 
ultimate object of preaching, and he used all the 
generous sentiment of human nature as appeal. A. 
T. Pierson looked upon preaching as a " divine art," 
and for that reason as " the finest of the fine arts." 
Dr. Phelps says a sermon is on " religious truth as con- 
tained in the Christian Scriptures." 

When Jesus was on earth he preached, Mark tells 
us, " the gospel of the kingdom of God." Mark 1 : 
14. At another time Christ himself said : " Repent : for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matt. 4: 17. When 
he entered into the synagogue in his own home town 
upon his return from the temptation and the book of 
the prophet Esaias was given to him he turned to the 
sixty-first chapter and read : " The spirit of the Lord 
is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the 
gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken- 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and re- 
covering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 
are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the 
Lord." Then he closed the book, handed it to the 



96 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

minister, sat down and said : " This day is this scripture 
fulfilled in your ears." 

St. Luke (24: 47) says it was meet that Christ 
should suffer and rise from the dead in order that 
" repentance and remission of sins should be preached 
in his name among all nations." Peter in his great 
Pentecostal sermon preached Christ as Lord and 
Savior. The theme of his preaching is found in Acts 
4 : 12, " Neither is there salvation in any other ; for 
there is none other name under heaven given among 
men, whereby we must be saved." Paul when in 
Pisidia upon invitation stood up in the Jews' synagogue 
and after a terse, historical introduction preached 
Christ unto them, " the forgiveness of sins." Acts 
13: 38. To the Romans (10: 8) he speaks of preach- 
ing the " word of faith." In 1 Cor. 1 : 22-23 he says : 
" For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek 
after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified." 

No one can be a Christian minister and not preach 
Christ as Lord. No one can leave out any of the 
Christian doctrines or virtues and do his duty as an 
ambassador of the lowly Nazarene. Everything men- 
tioned above he must preach, and much must he preach 
that we can not take time here to enumerate. Preach- 
ing is a means whereby the life of Christ is to be 



THE DISCOURSE. 97 

realized in the lives of men. Through preaching, 
men are to be Christed. The sermon is the oral dis- 
course by which this is to be realized. Christ should 
be accepted by all, so the sermon must appeal to all; 
it must be popular in the sense that it appeals to all 
classes. A sermon may be called an address to the 
popular mind. It was said of the Great Teacher that 
the common people heard him gladly. The truly 
great preachers are those whom the common man 
readily understands. This places the requirement 
upon the sermon that it be within easy reach of the 
masses. An old negro complained that their minister 
put the fodder up too high. Too many preachers 
do the same thing, I fear, not realizing that the sermon 
belongs also to the less learned, though no less virtu- 
ous, as well as to the cultured. 

The sermon gets its motive power from the purpose 
of the speaker. In proportion as his aim is noble 
and ideal will his efforts be of lasting benefit. For 
immediate effect it may not be so productive as the 
motive which panders to the prejudices and material 
desires of the hearers. Material gain or the success 
of party frequently conduces to effective emotion 
when noble appeals might fail ; however, the resultant 
action is not so likely to be ennobling. The preacher 



98 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

must have the salvation of his hearers at heart if 
his sermon is to breathe the vital saving power of 
Christ so that it becomes an irresistible force moving 
his hearers to an acceptance of the Christ life. Nei- 
ther will this be a mere emanation of the speaker, for 
in the selection of his words, in the casting of his 
sentences, and in the rhythmic flow of his phrases, will 
there be present this same power; it will be a perma- 
nent element of his sermon, whether written or spoken. 
The soul of the author breathes forever through his 
printed page. The sermon is the chalice in which 
the minister offers freely his soul's best blood to all 
who sit at his feet. 

Dr. Storrs says a good sermon should paint, prove, 
and persuade. But Rev. T. A. Waltrip thinks that 
" paint " now means to interest, " prove," to instruct, 
and " persuade," to inspire. These are, indeed, some 
of the requirements of a sermon, though they are by 
no means the only ones. Without interest, the peda- 
gogue is forever telling us, we can have no concentra- 
tion of mind, no intellectual development. The paint- 
ing secures interest invariably. If there were more 
painting and less dry statement of principles and laws 
there would be more spiritual growth in our church 
members and fewer sleepy heads in our pews. If all 



THE DISCOURSE. 99 

are interested it is a pleasant task to instruct. Much 
of the procrastination of the unsaved, much of the 
negligence of the professors of Christianity would 
be removed if the proper teaching were given. Ideals 
inspire as nothing else can. A sermon is not com- 
plete unless it lift heavenward with a buoyancy akin 
to angel wings. 

Were it not for revealed religion we would have 
no preaching. A sermon, then, is upon religious truth 
as contained in the Christian Scriptures. Preaching 
is one of the great means by which the Christian 
church perpetuates itself as well as enlarges its bor- 
ders. The sermon must find its grounding in some 
" thus saith the Lord." It is not the business of the 
preacher to discuss science or literature or art, un- 
less it be in so far as such discussion gives amplifi- 
cation to the gospel theme. A pastor is not preaching 
when he is discussing the latest novel or the oldest 
poem. He is then lecturing, which is all right in its 
place, but it has no place in the pastor's ministrations 
from the pulpit. The great reforms in the Christian 
church have been led by preachers who stood first 
and always for more of the Bible and less of creed, 
more of spirit and less of form. Huss, Wickliff, Luth- 
er, and the Puritan Fathers all stood for a free Bible 

uora 



100 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

and a free pulpit. They were preachers who based 
their sermons upon the Bible. 

The sermon must reach real wants. Disputed points 
in theology or in church government; theories of 
the resurrection; of the millennium, and of the state 
of the dead, may all be of interest and may have their 
places, but what the ordinary man needs at all times 
is truth that reaches his case, that relieves an op- 
pressive want. Give that to him and he will thank you 
for it. To him that is athirst give water, to him 
that hungers give bread ; water and bread — these reach 
the pressing needs of man. 

A text makes an excellent basis for a sermon. It 
helps to hold the sermon together and give it unity. 
The inspired words of the greatest teachers are best. 
The words of Christ have more weight than the words 
of others, and naturally have our preference. The 
words of uninspired characters are not so forceful, 
though they, too, at times point lessons. Oft-used 
texts are not to be avoided simply because they have 
been used a great deal. Much rubbing only polishes 
a true diamond. Texts that are clear and that touch 
great fundamental truths are the ones to select. A 
whole sentence will often serve better than a part of 
a sentence. 



THE DISCOURSE. 101 

There are many standpoints from which we may 
classify sermons. They may be looked at from the 
point of delivery in which we have: (1) those deliv- 
ered from manuscript, (2) those delivered from memo- 
ry, (3) those delivered extemporaneously. From 
considering the occasion, we have occasional and 
ordinary; from the subjects used, we have (1) doctrin- 
al, (2) practical, (3) historical, and (4) philosophical. 
If we look at the needs of the audience we may preach 
sermons to Christians, to sinners, to parents, to chil- 
dren, to the aged, to clergymen, to merchants, and 
so on. When based upon the power of mind most 
strongly appealed to we have sermons directed to the 
imagination, to the feelings, to the understanding, to 
the will. While if the text be considered we have 
topical, textual, expository, and inferential sermons. 

These classifications are not all rhetorical, and hence 
overlap a great deal. A sermon might at the same 
time belong to several of the above divisions. Yet 
every sermon has as its ultimate purpose the moving 
of the will. The above classifications may suggest 
the subject matter or the tone, but they are not in- 
tended as a logical classification. A sermon may be: 
(1) Explanatory — to make truth clear to the under- 
standing, so that it may be fully understood ; (2) II- 



102 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

lustrative — to make truth bright or lustrous, that it 
may be attractive; (3) Argumentative — to prove to 
the reason, that truth may be admitted; (4) Per- 
suasive — to urge to immediate action, that the truth 
may be accepted. 

When a sermon is analyzed it is found to consist 
of the following parts: (1) Introduction, (2) The 
Proposition, (3) The Proof, (4) The Conclusion. 
These are the logical parts of an oration as required 
by Aristotle, however few sermons have all of them. 
Rev. Phelps gives as divisions of the sermon: (1) 
Text, (2) Explanation, (3) Introduction, (4) Propo- 
sition, (5) Division, (6) Development, (7) Conclu- 
sion. One readily sees that few sermons conform to 
this outline. 

Length of the Sermon. — It is no easy task to de- 
termine whether a given discourse is too long or not. 
It depends so much upon the speaker and the audi- 
ence, to say nothing about the occasion, that no defi- 
nite time limit can be stated. The size of the sub- 
ject, too, has something to contribute in a legitimate 
determination of the length of a certain discourse. 
Briefly stated, then, we have two very prominent fac- 
tors, each of which has a good right to be considered 
in any satisfactory settlement of this mooted question. 



THE DISCOURSE. 103 

The speaker, since it is he who must deliver the 
discourse, is the first to be considered. He is sup- 
posed to know what his subject includes, and hence to 
know the scope of treatment necessary for the best 
results. He is expected to give unity to his discourse 
and can hardly be asked to chop off his discourse at a 
point where the effect of completeness would be lost 
entirely. If, to start with, he has overestimated the 
capacity of his audience and has outlined his subject 
too elaborately, he has made a serious mistake, one 
which, if he be wise, he will not make again with the 
same audience. For though it is in reality a compli- 
ment paid an audience to overestimate its capacity, 
yet so few audiences take it that way, that the much 
safer course is never to trust to that kind of compli- 
ment. But, granting that the speaker has made the 
mistake of overestimating the capacity and endurance 
of his audience, he still has the right to ask what 
shall be done. Shall he continue and weary his audi- 
ence, or shall he stop short and spoil a good discourse ? 

It depends largely upon the speaker what his first 
impulse will be, for if he be a man extremely sensi- 
tive to the presence and attitude of his audience, de- 
pending largely upon the manifest interest and at- 
tention of his hearers, his first impulse will unavoid- 



104 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

ably be to stop at once, while, on the other hand, if 
he be a man capable of intense concentration, one over 
whom thought wields a dominant influence, his im- 
pulse upon noticing weariness in his audience, if he 
notices it at all, will be to continue his discourse, trust- 
ing to the unity of his thought to win approval. The 
audience may very generally criticise him and com- 
plain of his wearying them, but the intellectually 
strong, those who have the sense of beauty aroused, 
those who have a feeling of completeness, will ap- 
prove of the speaker's courage. They will under- 
stand how the speaker was carried away by the force 
of his own thought and his sense of unity into a sin 
against the audience, so that he might give symmetry 
to the subject he had undertaken to treat, and they 
will tell him they could have listened another hour. 
All compliments couched in similar words, how- 
ever, should not fully convince the speaker that he was 
wholly beyond just censure in the course he pursued, 
for such compliments -may have been given out of pity 
or prejudice, and to them he cannot fully trust. He 
himself, too, may have been actuated more by egoism 
than inspiration. He may have imagined it heaping 
honor to himself to outwind some other speaker, or 
he may have imagined others would measure his intel- 



THE DISCOURSE. 105 

lectual calibre by the length of his discourse. These 
are all false ideas, and the sooner a speaker can get 
rid of them the better for him. Only a genuine in- 
terest, only an overflowing of personal knowledge and 
experience, only a burning sense of incompleteness, 
if he stops, will justify any speaker in continuing his 
discourse after the audience shows weariness. 

For the speaker who comes under the first class, 
there is no alternative; his sensitiveness, his absolute 
dependence upon the sympathy of his audience, makes 
it imperative that he stop as soon as his audience 
tire in the least. His studied effort must ever be to 
avoid an expression of weariness on the part of his 
audience, for in that lies certainly the most potent 
factor of success for him as a public speaker. He can 
by no means cope as effectively with wearied audi- 
ences as can his brother speaker of the second class. 
Our conclusion, then, from the standpoint of the 
speaker, is, that what might be too long for one speak- 
er is not too long for another, and that this fact is 
due not to the speaker's ability alone, as is usually 
said, but more particularly due to the constitutional 
habit of his mind. 

Considered from the standpoint of the audience, 
the length of discourse cannot be wholly determined 



106 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

by the intellectual plane of the individual hearers, 
because it is a likeness of interests rather than a same- 
ness of intellectuality that determines the readiness of 
audience fusing. And a fusing of individual minds 
is necessary for audience attention, without which 
public discourse in its true sense cannot exist. The 
less frequently individuals mingle and exchange views 
or hear the same thing in public discourses, the fewer 
ideas they have in common, and so the lower must 
necessarily be the plane of audience fusing. The 
length of discourse suited to a given audience will 
be determined by the number of ideas held in com- 
mon by the individuals composing the audience. Here 
nothing counts so definitely as the social and relig- 
ious life. 

If an audience be composed of fifty farmers and 
fifty city doctors of medicine, the speaker who ad- 
dresses them will experience some difficulty, not be- 
cause of ignorance, but because of diversity of ideas. 
For either fifty, if addressed alone, a longer discourse 
might be outlined, since the ideas common to all are 
more numerous, thus giving the speaker a larger field 
from which to draw in sustaining interest. Now it is 
wholly wrong to imagine that the speaker is invari- 
ably to blame for a failure to hold interestingly his 



THE DISCOURSE. 107 

audience. The very diversity of interests and of ideas 
makes it impossible for the speaker to hold them 
throughout. For illustration, take the great dailies 
published in our large cities. There is the page of 
political news, of society gossip, of sporting news, of 
market prices, of wit and humor, and of sermon and 
song, in some page of which the editor feels con- 
fident each person will find something to suit his taste, 
and he is not mistaken, for each reader greedily de- 
vours the special dish prepared for him and then 
throws away the remainder, lest by tasting he spoil 
the flavor of his own dish. The great daily is read 
by many people, but it is not read throughout by any. 
No one bores himself with the pages he has no interest 
in, and he does not need to do so, because the news- 
paper has no unity as a whole. It is different with a 
public discourse, it must have unity and it must be 
listened to from beginning to end by every one. If 
it does not interest everyone throughout, it ceases to 
be public discourse and becomes conversation, inas- 
much as the audience as such are no longer fused. 
The same result ensues which would be experienced 
if every one taking a daily were compelled t© read it 
through. Out of the twenty pages each reader would 
be wearily dragged over nineteen, only really interested 



108 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

in one. So, to some extent, is the experience of the 
speaker who tries to hunt up some bit of speech for 
each one in his audience. While he is giving his mo- 
mentary pet his proper tidbit, all others wearily sleep, 
waking up just in time to take their turn in smack- 
ing their lips over their own sweet morsel. The de- 
cline of oratory ushered in by the vociferous clamor 
for shorter speeches is indicative of a lamentable es- 
trangement of individuals in interest and in thought. 
The multitudinous lines of modern activity and the 
intense specialization of the day make long discourse 
next to impossible, but a church-going, Bible-reading 
and Bible-loving community tires least quickly when 
a lengthy Bible discourse is imposed upon it. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Language and Thought in Discourse. 

Belong Together. — Thought and language are 
complementary, each essential to the other. As the 
kernel in the nut is not possible without the hull, so 
thought must be grown in language forms. Even as 
the size and form of the kernel is determined by the 
hull, so, too, the limitations of language place immov- 
able restrictions upon thought. A rare, large gem 
appears to best advantage when placed in a setting 
that is befitting its worth. No one would think of 
couching a priceless stone in a mean, copper setting. 
The size and color of the gem will determine, with the 
jeweler, the character of the setting. No less impor- 
tant is the correspondence of language and thought, 
for the sublimest thought gains much complementary 
luster and beauty of symmetry by being conveyed in 
the sublimest language forms. It is not alone the 
beauty of idea, but equally also the beauty of word 
that finds the aesthetic in the poet's reader. Were his 
airy fancies ever so gossamer-like in their delicacy 
they would add no mite to poetic beauty if not 
clothed in seemly garments of the most gauzy texture. 

109 



110 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

The painter and photographer dare not ignore the 
background to painting or photograph; the poet and 
orator must both alike study language effects. 

Oral or Written — Which? — One of the first ques- 
tions the speaker must decide is whether his dis- 
course shall be written or not. If he decides to write 
it, there still remains the question of committing it 
to memory. 

An extemporaneous speech is different from a ful- 
ly prepared and written onfe. I do not mean to say 
that any one can speak without preparation, but some 
speakers do not entirely cast their sentences until up- 
on their feet in delivery. Not a few, indeed, have 
excellent memories and repeat more from memory 
than at first they think. Wordsworth at the age of 
seventy-three tells of the composition of his well-known 
poem, " Tintern Abbey," in the following words : 
" No poem of mine was composed under circumstances 
more pleasant for me to remember than this. I be- 
gan it upon leaving Tintern after crossing the Wye, 
and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the 
evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my 
sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part 
of it written down till I reached Bristol." It is likely 
true that even the minutest parts of our discourse are 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. Ill 

worked out in mind and held in memory, coming to 
us in delivery, not spontaneously as we imagine, but 
rather from previously trodden brain paths. Often 
we catch ourselves claiming another's very words as 
original with our own thought. Elder A. C. Wieand 
once told me of how he wrote a pretty little poem be- 
lieving it wholly his own for some time, until he 
chanced upon it in Shakespeare, and to his astonish- 
ment found his own imagined authorship slink aside 
and bow ceremoniously to the more lowly personality, 
memory. 

Men who pride themselves upon their extemporan- 
eous speaking would be surprised, if their speeches 
were all taken down, to find how meager their really 
spontaneous genius is, and how much they repeat, 
and how much they unconsciously declaim. Not many 
years ago I chanced to be in a home where the husband 
made no profession of Christianity; however, his wife 
did. He lived close to a churchhouse and when chided 
by someone in the company for his negligence in at- 
tending services he said, " Well, when I do go I in- 
variably hear the same sermon." Now, indeed, there 
was more truth than fiction in that statement, for the 
ministers in that church had always practiced ex- 
temporaneous speaking, had learned from the elder 



112 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

many set phrases and an unvarying line of sermon 
material, all of which made the constant repetition 
unavoidable. 

So, whether a man writes and commits his sermons, 
or speaks extemporaneously, his memory must assist 
him. Still, the diction of spoken discourse will not 
demand as large a vocabulary as that of written dis- 
course, and, in the main, the words will be easier, 
and also not quite so accurate. The speakers vo- 
cabulary, though not as large as the writer's must be 
at a readier command ; for the speaker can not wait on 
words. They must crowd one another, anxiously 
waiting use. The speaker will use fewer synonymous 
terms, thus failing to draw the nice distinctions pos- 
sible with a more varied vocabulary. 

The sentences of spoken discourse are shorter and 
clearer than those of written discourse. The hearer 
can not turn back to catch up the thought, if, per- 
chance, he misses it, as the reader can, and so the 
speaker, striving to hold his hearer's attention, simpli- 
fies and shortens his sentences. Thus American 
prose has gained much in directness and simplicity 
through her public speakers. 

Spoken discourse must be immediately lucid ; gram- 
mar and emphasis must aid here. Not that certain 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 113 

words must be spoken with greater force than others, 
but important words must be given important places 
in the sentence, and point, antithesis and epigram 
used to advantage. The speaker will always find some 
in his audience who cannot follow him. For these 
he must repeat. He must cast sentences into similar 
structure to bring out by parallelism and balance the 
important ideas with the least possible expenditure 
of mental energy on the part of the hearer. Many 
sentences will be exclamatory and interrogative to ar- 
rest attention and enforce thought. The stiff state- 
liness of dignified prose or lofty poetry must be dis- 
carded for the abrupter, more irregular and more con- 
tracted forms of speech. The speaker's language is 
sturdier, more limpid, more buoyant, and nearer the 
earth than the writer's. It may make use of provin- 
cialisms not admissible in print. In writing, the halt- 
ing, the inaccuracies, the poverty of vocabulary, the 
bald crudity in phrase, and the chaotic sentences of 
rapid speech disappear; words are examined, phrases 
are tried, and sentences are nicely pruned and pro- 
portioned before they are allowed to stand. This, 
too, ought to be true of spoken discourse, but at a 
glance one sees it can only be true if writing import 



114 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

it into extemporaneous speech ; for these are virtues 
which come with writing. 

The subject matter may make a difference whether 
spoken or written discourse should be used. If the 
thought you want to express is close logically it may 
require writing out to get it just as it should be. 
Emerson said he wrote rather than spoke extempore, 
because he wished the hearer to be able to see, after 
he was through talking, just what he had said, and 
then he, too, wanted to be sure at all times of what 
he was saying. To do this he had to write it down 
and read it to his hearers. Ruskin in " Two Paths " 
says : " Do not think that I am speaking under ex- 
cited feeling, or in any exaggerated terms. I have 
written the words I use, that I may know what I say, 
and that you, if you choose, may see what I have 
written." Thus we see that when a man wants to 
be certain of what he says he had better commit it to 
writing. Business men are careful about the trans- 
actions they put to paper. Most any man will tell 
you in private conversation that which he would not 
care to write you in a letter. 

Writing tends to greater accuracy and to more 
polished forms of expression. In writing an oration, 
lecture or sermon, the impassioned mood of the speak- 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 115 

er before his audience must take the place of the quiet 
mood of the writer in his study. Terseness, direct- 
ness, force, and exaggeration, due to intensity, must 
dominate, or the written discourse will be too much 
like an essay or a recitation and not like an address. 
In writing there is the idea of permanency which be- 
gets and sustains a constant mood of accuracy. 
Along with this goes a certain dignity and a certain 
formalism not found in unpremeditated speech. 

In brief, then, writing tends to add polish and in- 
trinsic literary worth to spoken discourse. It en- 
larges the live vocabulary, enriches the diction, and 
adds variety to phrase and sentence. It enables a 
speaker to avoid ruts in both thought and language, 
since he can readily see, when once he gets his dis- 
course upon paper, how much he repeats and how tri- 
fling his thought really is. Many a speaker has experi- 
enced the just self-criticism: "I alius hollers when 
I haint nuthin' to say." Emotion is allowed to take 
the place of thought, lung-power is substituted for 
brain-power. Writing is an excellent corrective here, 
for spoken discourse can not carry effectively the 
burden of thought that the written can, and one who 
constantly speaks extempore is in great danger of di- 
luting too much. 



116 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

However, we must not lose sight of the fact that 
spoken discourse is the only one for the orator. It 
has an air of spontaneity, a directness akin to per- 
sonal appeal, an emotional plane known only to unpre- 
meditated eloquence, a sweep of rhythm in phrase and 
sentence, all of which it owes to its oral nature; writ- 
ing would diminish its possibilities in these. Dr. 
Phelps says : " A perfect orator would never write, he 
would always speak." The following clipped from the 
Pathfinder, 1905, gives a noted public speaker's opin- 
ion upon this subject: 

" Congressman ' Uncle Joe ' Cannon of Illinois in 
rising to make an off-hand talk at the Hamilton Club 
banquet in Chicago, said — as Mark Antony did in 
' Julius Caesar ' — he was no speech-maker. And then 
he made a speech that captured his audience. He 
paid this somewhat sinister compliment to the 'finished 
orator ' : 

" ' I never wrote a speech in my life, and never but 
once used one that another man had written. I envy 
the man who can sit down in cold blood and achieve a 
thought, then dress it — put clothes on it, pants, coat, 
vest, shoes, and collar, and turn it out in full attire, 
as Minerva sprouted from the brain of Jupiter.' " 

It may easily be conceded that the extemporaneous 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 117 

ideal is the true one for a public speaker to have. 
Yet I cannot refrain from saying that I believe pulpit 
eloquence in America is suffering from barrenness of 
thought, due in a large measure to unpremeditated 
speech in pulpit and upon platform. One reason why 
the masses will listen to a lecture and not to a ser- 
mon is because the lecturer makes them think and feel, 
the sermon lacks the force of charged thought. The 
lecture is the cream of the speaker's thought and 
work, the sermon the skimmed milk. Nothing short 
of thorough preparation on the part of the minister 
will bring hearers for his sermon. Only let the preach- 
er understand his message from the pulpit as he does 
from the platform, and his listeners will not sleep. 

Notes, the Outline. — A great many ministers speak 
from brief notes or outline. The outline is a sort 
of compromise between reading from a manuscript 
and speaking extemporaneously. What are its vir- 
tues? What its vices? For the speaker who has a 
poor memory and little time to prepare his address 
the outline is indispensable. Without it he could not 
readily avail himself of thought which comes to him 
in his study. The outline is all his memory needs, 
for it starts his mind on the proper line of thought, 
and being ready at expressing thought in language 



118 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

forms, he does not need to write out what he wants 
to say. 

The outline enables the speaker to arrange his 
thought in a logical form, and then to follow the ar- 
rangement without chance for slips of memory. In 
most of our truly extemporaneous speeches we think 
of the best speech after we have taken our seats. 
The outline enables one to get some of his best thoughts 
in at the right place. It does away with a great deal 
of the haphazard talking, and cultivates a logical ar- 
rangement of topics, giving unity and proportion to 
one's speech as a whole. 

For the speaker who finds it difficult to secure and 
hold subject matter enough for a sermon of the usual 
length, the outline aids in giving length, and for the 
one who is in the habit of talking too long, it will 
serve as a reminder to stop when the address is fin- 
ished. Possibly no greater mistake is made by ex- 
temporaneous speakers in general than that of empha- 
sizing some one topic more than the length of the 
discourse justifies. This can be remedied by rigidly 
adhering to a well-proportioned outline. With the 
outline one can easily see the proportion of all parts 
and can thus avoid long introductions or long per- 
orations. 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 119 

The outline allows one to give himself up wholly 
to the topic immediately under treatment, which re- 
lieves the strain upon memory, and doubtless gives 
ease to public speakers of a certain type. It does not 
seem to me to be the ideal way, but at the same time, 
I know it is the only method used by many public 
speakers. When one has his subject well outlined 
he feels much like the speaker who has his discourse 
written out and knows it has intrinsic value in itself, 
even aside from the delivery ; so one-half of the burden 
of an extemporaneous speech is removed. Too much 
value should not be attached to the outline, for even 
with a good outline much yet depends upon clearness 
of mind and excellency of delivery, both of which 
depend somewhat upon the physical and mental con- 
dition of the speaker and atmospheric and audience 
conditions. The public discourses of no public speak- 
er are all of equal merit. Mental habitudes will large- 
ly determine whether an outline should or should not 
be used, for the outline is not without its disad- 
vantages. 

One detracting result of the outline is that it les- 
sens the responsibility upon the memory and thus 
weakens it, so that the outlines become more and more 
elaborate; a speaker finds himself tied closer and 



120 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

closer to his notes; until finally his discourse is little 
other than a sort of running commentary on his notes. 
A discourse written out in full and then read would 
sound much better, for its sentences would be com- 
plete and it would likely contain some amount of 
emotion, at least, while the speaker who is put to his 
wits' end to interpret his notes is not able to get any 
emotion at all into his discourse. 

The outline destroys to some extent the ring of 
originality. Whatever the speaker has upon paper 
will be looked upon with suspicion by the hearers, 
it may not be original, while extemporaneous speech 
will be readily granted the advantage of originality. 
This last is of much value. The reader can never get 
as close to the heart of his listener as the extempo- 
raneous speaker can. For while there is more of 
polish and rhetoric in the written discourse, there is 
by far more heart in the spoken one. 

There is a marked advantage in an extensive out- 
line if future use be considered, since the subject 
matter is thus better held and more readily recalled. 
Very brief notes are of present value only. I think 
it best to outline and to commit the outline to memory 
for delivery. It is well to write out the sermon en- 
tirely, even if it is not committed, since a certain 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE 121 

vocabulary benefit is derived by several thorough 
readings. 

Thought Processes. — When once the subject has 
been selected, the speaker proceeds to present it by 
using some form of thought process or embodiment. 
The forms of discourse are description, narration, ex- 
position, and argumentation. The nature of the theme 
chosen should determine which of these ought to be 
used. However, the purpose of the speaker must 
also be considered in any just determination of the 
form of embodiment, as the same theme may be de- 
veloped by different thought processes. If a speak- 
er wants to make vivid the " love of God," he pictures 
it in words or tells some touching story embodying it, 
while if he wants to make his hearers believe " that 
God loves man " he produces testimony and proceeds 
to argue the proposition. Let us examine the various 
forms of discourse a little. 

Description aims to present a picture, it appeals 
to the senses, it tries to portray the picturesque, it 
deals with persons and things. Narration, too, deals 
with persons and things. Under the topic " The Pow- 
er to Describe " I have treated in part the subject of 
description. But there I looked at it from the speak- 
er's standpoint, while here I want to look at it as a 



122 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

form of discourse. A description is a photograph in 
words. It presents things as one sees them. A nar- 
ration is a moving picture. Description ordinarily 
leaves life out, striving to realize the static appearance 
of things. Narration lays more emphasis upon the 
action. Objects in motion, acting and reacting upon 
each other, is the fundamental in narration. If de- 
scription is a snapshot, narration is a series of snap- 
shots blended into continuous change. One might de- 
scribe a tree or a man, a house or a town, and one 
would have as a result, the appearance of the tree from 
a certain place and at a given time, while the narra- 
tive would give the life-growth of the tree or it would 
give the biography of the man. 

In description little things count. One should re- 
member in describing a house that one can not see 
opposite sides at the same time. Distance, too, makes 
things look differently. Some things visible close at 
hand are not visible at a distance. Yet in all good 
description there must be a viewpoint. If the view- 
point is not mentioned, it must at least be assumed. 
Consistency must rule, things not seen together should 
not be put together. In general there are two meth- 
ods of describing; the one describes things in the 
order in which they appear. If, for instance, you 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 123 

are describing a room, you may take each object in 
the room in the order in which it appears there. The 
other method arranges tilings in the order of their 
importance or prominence, going either from the less 
to the least prominent or from the greater to the 
greatest in importance. The choice of important ob- 
jects will be in accordance with the character and 
interests of the author. What may seem important to 
you may not interest another. But when describing 
for certain effects it is necessary to choose such parts 
of a scene as contribute to the desired effect. Thus 
entirely different effects may be had from the same 
scene, all resting upon the nature and order of the 
parts in the description. If cheerful, you select the 
cheerful aspects of nature, if sad, the sad. 

In narration it is necessary to arrange the parts 
in the order of a climax, eliminating the unimportant 
ones, thus giving constancy of tone to the entire pro- 
duction. In narration the unifying element is time, 
and only those things which occur at a given time 
should be put together. A proper sequence of topics 
is easier secured in narration than in any other form of 
discourse. 

A great deal of the public speaker's time is con- 
sumed in explaining words, terms, and propositions. 



124 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

Exposition is explanation, it is giving the content of 
expressions in easier terms. It is definition some- 
times, sometimes mere restatement or repetition. In 
description we give the particulars which are dif- 
ferent or are nonessential to the class to which the 
individual belongs, so as to be able to distinguish one 
individual from another; in exposition we give the 
essential content, or that which is necessary to the 
individual from the standpoint of the class. Exposi- 
tion takes the form of commentary, of instruction. 

Argumentation attempts the proof of a statement. 
It may take either the affirmative or the negative of 
a question, proving the truth or falsity. Its business 
is not to assert but to prove. So many who argue 
imagine that a vehement expression of their own 
opinion is argument. It is not. To prove a proposi- 
tion one must give reasons and cite precedents and ar- 
ray witnesses and quote authority. In proving a 
proposition one should bear in mind the rights of 
others, for they have a right to their own opinion as 
well as we have to ours. One should remember, too, 
that nine-tenths of the argumentation would be avoid- 
ed if those who argue fully understood the terms used. 

Since it has been shown that audiences do not, as 
a rule, follow argument well, it is necessary for the 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 125 

speaker to illustrate his thought fully and not do much 
abstract reasoning. 

I do not think it best for a speaker to follow any 
one form of discourse exclusively. He will do better 
if he selects such themes as require a variety of treat- 
ment. Let him try all forms and change often from 
one form to another. This change will be good for 
his hearers and it will be good for him. However, 
it must be remembered that to attain the greatest ef- 
ficiency in any one form, it takes much practice in that 
form. By no means neglect description and narration, 
for without these pretty well developed little pro- 
ficiency in the other forms can be attained. Some of 
our best speakers owe their success to their skill in 
describing. 

Discourse in Parts. — A discourse is divisible into 
paragraphs, and in the printed or written page these 
are indented so as to enable the eye to readily mark 
them. In the spoken discourse, however, they exist, 
too, and should be considered as essential in it as in 
the written one. In spoken discourse pauses occur 
which mark the closing of one paragraph and the be- 
ginning of another. Sometimes transitional words 
and phrases are used. These are then followed by the 
statement of the topic of the paragraph. A paragraph 



126 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

is made up of the group of sentences which treat a 
single topic of the theme. The paragraph, like the 
whole discourse, should be upon the topic alone, ex- 
cluding rigidly all irrelevant matter. Thus it main- 
tains its unity. 

The length of the paragraph will be determined by 
the amount of matter to be said upon the topic, usually 
graduated in harmony with its importance compared 
with the other topics of the discourse. If one's para- 
graphs are too short they give a very bald, outline-like 
appearance, because the proper amount of amplifica- 
tion is not given. Usually the topic is stated in a short 
sentence at the beginning of the paragraph, though 
this is not always the case, for sometimes the topic 
sentence is found in the center or even at the close of 
the paragraph. After the topic has thus been ex- 
pressed in the topic sentence, there may be a repetition 
of it in other words added for clearness and by way 
of explanation. The topic is then further developed 
or amplified by giving particulars or details, by citing 
specific instances or examples, by instituting compari- 
sons or contrasts, by stating causes or effects, by 
telling what the topic is not or by giving proof. Any 
one or any number of these in combination may be 
used in the paragraph. Which ones are to be used 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 127 

must be determined by the speaker as limited by his 
theme and manner of treatment. In a descriptive 
paragraph put what you find associated in space ; in a 
narrative one put what you find occurring in a given 
time ; in an expository or argumentative one put only 
such thought as is logically related. If this is kept in 
mind and is carefully followed, the unity of para- 
graph, and of entire discourse, will be easily sustained. 
Too many speakers amplify by merely repeating in 
other words. There is a marked dearth of illustration 
and comparison and contrast, and as a consequence 
the paragraphs become monotonous in method of 
development, and the discourse, listened to at first 
with interest, ends by tiring everyone. Varied para- 
graph development would relieve the monotony and 
arouse interest. The larger, fuller paragraph is pre- 
ferable to the shorter more meagre one. 

The sentence of the public speaker is usually shorter 
and looser than that of the writer. Unity must be 
maintained, however, and sentences should readily 
yield their thought, always maintaining a clearness 
and definiteness for even the most ignorant listener. 
One should not always use short sentences, for though 
they are indispensable for the statement of topics, for 
pointed and concentrated thought, for exclamations 



128 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

and for startling, stirring-up ideas ; yet the long sen- 
tence permits one to pass rapidly many particulars or 
details, to give sweep, volume and weight of thought, 
to add rhythmic effect unattainable with the short sen- 
tence. The orator soon finds the power of the periodic 
sentence that holds the hearer in suspense until the 
last part is given. Its secret lies in giving all of the 
unimportant, the subordinate, elements first and hold- 
ing the main, important idea until last. For those who 
have good memories this form of sentence has a pe- 
culiar fascination. Then there is the balanced sen- 
tence, so numerous in the Proverbs, the kind for com- 
parison and contrast; and the climax sentence that 
rises like rounds in a ladder, used in attaining supreme 
effects. The loose sentence is the one most generally 
used in ordinary conversation because of its easy flow 
and its ready understanding, since it gives up its 
thought as it proceeds. But it is not well to use one 
given form of sentence exclusively. A variety will 
produce better results. Frequently the shorter sen- 
tences occur at the beginning of the paragraph, while 
as the thought grows in volume and as details crowd 
in for expression, and as emotion arises, the sentences 
become longer, corresponding with the sweep of 
thought and the swell of feeling. As objects for com- 



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN DISCOURSE. 129 

parison or contrast appear, the balanced sentence 
nicely adjusts the beam and weighs them, and then 
summing all up the climax instinct begins with the less 
important and gradually rises to the idea of most 
importance. This last will give an idea of the differ- 
ent kinds of sentences and how some of them are at 
times used. 



CHAPTER IX. 
Style in Discourse. 

Style has to do with the forms of discourse, it se- 
lects and arranges words and sentences so as to pro- 
duce desired effects. Before there can be much con- 
scious effort in style the thought must be pretty well 
developed, for if there is a mere statement of fact, style 
could scarcely be said to enter into consideration at all. 
In dictionaries, encyclopedias, and works of a similar 
nature, style is reduced to a minimum. In orations, 
lectures, sermons, and poetry style becomes a very 
important factor, nearly as much value attaching to 
the way a thought is put as to the thought itself. 
Sometimes when a speaker makes a blunder you de- 
plore the way he expresses his idea, rather than the 
fact that he should express such an idea at all. Then 
after a second thought you say, " Well, it was just 
like him to say it that way; he always just bluntlv 
blurts out what he thinks." Now in the expression 
" it was just like him " you have struck the key to the 
style of every speaker or writer; it is this, that the 
style is the man. 

130 



STYLE IN DISCOURSE. 131 

The Style is the Man. — Critics have said that Ma- 
caulay in writing his history of England did not hesi- 
tate to stretch the truth if in so doing he could get 
a nicely balanced sentence. Carlyle is so abrupt, has 
so many inversions, and is withal so odd in his sen- 
tence structure that many do not like him and will 
not read him, and all because of his style. Browning 
packs his sentences so full, takes so much for granted 
which you are expected to read between the lines, that 
little pleasure can be gotten from reading his con- 
tracted, compacted pages for the first time. Yet his 
thought is good, it is his style that bars his works 
from the masses. 

If a man is a clear thinker he will put his thought in 
clear, logically-connected sentences. If he is intensely 
in earnest he will not play with weak, questionable 
words. If he is hesitating and halting, his sentences, 
too, will betray the weakness. The penetrating eye, 
the analytic mind, the throbbing heart, will fashion 
their own images upon the page as the author writes, 
or form themselves upon the tongue-tip as the orator 
speaks. In your style you can not get far from your- 
self, and yet style can be acquired. I know a minister 
who has one style for expressing his thought in the 
pulpit, and another very different style for his utter- 



132 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

ances out of the pulpit. The former was acquired by 
the study of the Bible and by the reading of good lit- 
erature, the latter by conversing with his home as- 
sociates. In the pulpit his choice of words, grammar, 
and sentence structure are nearly faultless; while in 
his ordinary conversation his language is an extremely 
low grade of the provincial, in which is mixed plenty 
of slang of the milder sort. This minister has, in 
reality, two personalities, one for the pulpit and an- 
other for every day life. In the following pages I 
want to discuss some desirable qualities of style. 

Clearness. — In the discussion of qualities of style 
we find, almost invariably, clearness heading the list. 
Bryant, the poet, for fifty years editor of the Evening 
Post, said in speaking upon style : " It seems to me 
that in style we ought first, and above all things, to 
aim at clearness of expression. An obscure style is, of 
course, a bad style." Mr. Lewis in his " Principles of 
Success in Literature " tells us : "A reader can not be 
expected to be interested in ideas which are not pre- 
sented intelligibly to him, nor delighted by the art 
which does not touch him; and for the writer to im- 
ply that he furnishes arguments, but does not pretend 
to furnish brains to understand the arguments. i<? 
arrogance." However, there are those who imagine 



STYLE IN DISCOURSE. v 133 

depth of thought to go with obscurity of language, 
and so if they understand all of a speech they think 
it very ordinary. It is told of David Crockett that he 
once heard Daniel Webster speak at Washington and 
upon meeting him afterward engaged him in the fol- 
lowing conversation : " 'Is this Mr. Webster ?' ' Yes 
sir.' ' The great Daniel Webster of Massachusetts?' 
1 1 am Daniel Webster of Massachusetts/ replied the 
orator. * I heard that you were a great man, but I 
don't believe it, for I understood every word of your 
speech. , " So it should be, indeed, for to what end 
does one speak if it is not to be understood ? 

When General Armstrong took Booker T. Wash- 
ington through the North on a tour to raise funds for 
the erection of Alabama Hall at Tuskegee, Alabama, 
he gave him but one word of advice. It was, " Give 
them an idea for every word." And Booker T. 
Washington commenting upon it says he thinks the ad- 
vice hard to improve upon. Whittier was not always 
sure of his punctuation nor even of his sentence struc- 
ture, but he knew what he wanted to say and tried to 
say it in the easiest way possible. A certain now un- 
known poet of whom Sir Walter Scott tells once sent 
some verses to his publishers. They were unable to 
fathom the meaning at certain places and returned the 



134 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

lines in question for explanation, but were surprised 
to receive the reply that the author himself did not 
know what the lines meant. Just as this poet, so some 
speakers if questioned after a passionate speech as to 
the meaning of certain sentences would have to con- 
fess, blushingly no doubt, their entire ignorance of the 
import. We should strive at all times to be clear and 
should, use only such words as convey our exact 
meaning. 

Short sentences and easy sentence structure aid in 
keeping the thought clear. Long sentences easily be- 
come involved and frequently end in a hopeless tangle. 
Cut long sentences in two. Be sure you know what 
you are going to say before you begin your sentence 
and stop when you have said that particular thing. I 
once heard a speaker who, from his sentence structure, 
had no idea what he was going to say when he began 
a sentence. He would turn and twist and add and 
subjoin until all reference to his original subject in the 
sentence was forgotten. He started usually with a 
normal sentence structure, but he had no idea of the 
unity, clearness, or length of a sentence. A hazy 
thinker has hard work to construct a clear discourse. 
A near-sighted man sees distant objects only indis- 
tinctly, and so a near-sighted intellect gets distant or 



STYLE IN DISCOURSE. 135 

deep truth into hazy language, because he sees it only 
indistinctly. If you are not sure you understand 
thoroughly what you are prompted to say, you had 
better not say it, for others will likely know less about 
what you are trying to say than you, yourself, do. Be 
clear, at least, whatever the cost may be to other 
qualities of style. 

Force. — It is not enough that a speaker's words are 
clear, they must be energetic also. Force, energy, or 
vigor is the character that impresses the hearer ; it is 
that which interests and holds him. To a very large 
extent it springs direct from the desire or will of the 
speaker. Above clearness which appeals direct to the 
intellect, and above elegance or beauty which appeals 
to the emotions, force appeals to the will and is emi- 
nently essential to oratory. A strong, ethical impulse 
moving the speaker is required as an unfailing source 
of vigor. It is the truth that must be said, the cause 
that must be espoused which energizes into a vital, 
vivifying, resistless power the words of the eloquent. 
The man without a message, the man without fixed, 
positive convictions, while he may have knowledge 
and can speak clearly and even fluently, will still lack 
the heat of a live wire, he will still lack the one 
prime quality of the style of the eloquent. In propor- 



136 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

tion as the orator's mind is bent upon communicating 
some truth ; his heart, restless and throbbing, set upon 
some reform; his soul, aspiring and rejoicing, stirred 
to its depths by some heaven-sent vision, will he find 
forceful, vigorous words for his ideas, and sentence 
forms adequate for his thought. 

Mere violence or vehemence is not vigor. Cutting 
and slashing do not make discourse forceful ; these may 
cause hearers to turn away in disgust. Intensity of 
spirit, sincere earnestness make anything but energetic 
language inadequate. As the live coal glows when 
fanned by the ocean breeze, so the earnest speaker's 
words when beat upon by the gales of truth and convic- 
tion. If these breezes come from a soul snow-capped 
in purity lying amid the mountain peaks of liberty 
they will fan the speaker's every utterance into warmth 
and anon into brilliancy. 

But one ought to remember that concrete terms are 
stronger, more vigorous than corresponding abstract 
ones. Say violets rather than flowers, steak rather 
than meat, a million dollars rather than much money, 
Henry Martin rather than a man. Thus you are defi- 
nite and what you say is more vivid. At times it wiil 
make a great deal of work for you to be definite and 
accurate in particulars. Figures, dates, and specific 



STYLE IN DISCOURSE. 137 

instances all have their force provided they are master- 
ed and well handled before an audience. However, 
one can soon overload an audience with that kind of 
matter alone. Familiar words are more vigorous than 
unfamiliar ones; short ones more vigorous than long 
ones, since these readily give up their meaning. It is 
not true that short words are always more forceful 
than long ones, as a great deal depends upon what the 
two words stand for. Mr. Spencer justly remarks that 
" stupendous " is stronger than " vast " since the 
length of the word aids in giving time for the mind 
to grasp the magnitude of the idea. 

Slang, of all words, is strongest, but it is not admis- 
sible because it is not standard. Slang of the better 
sort will finally become idiom. The idioms of any 
language are among its strongest expressions. Avoid 
vulgarisms, provincialisms, slang, and all of the un- 
familiar contractions. 

Study concentration and directness. Omit all un- 
necessary words and clauses. Shorten sentences by 
using words and phrases to express what clauses other- 
wise have expressed. Instead of saying " the man 
who labors for a living " say " the laboring man." Or 
instead of saying " the man who lives by stealing " say 
" the thief." If you study your language from this 



138 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

viewpoint you will be surprised to find how much a 
little thought and work will increase your power to 
interest your hearers, how much more vigorous your 
style will become. 

Emphasis. — Sometimes we understand by emphasis 
the force applied in the pronunciation of certain 
words; however, that is not the meaning of the term 
here. By the very nature of the sentence it has two 
emphatic positions, the beginning and the close. When 
I went to country school and used to stand up with 
the boys and girls in the long row down one side of the 
schoolroom there were two members of that spelling 
class who were more prominent, more emphatic than 
any other ; the one who stood at the head, the other at 
the foot. Every sentence has an important beginning 
and a more important close. The beginning of the 
sentence is important since it usually contains the sub- 
ject of the sentence. It contains the idea about which 
the sentence is written or spoken. However, the predi- 
cate is even more important, since it contains the thing 
said about the subject. Now from the psychological 
side the beginning of every sentence is important be- 
cause it is immediately preceded by nothing and the 
mind is open, unoccupied and has a chance to get the 
full force of the first word, while the last word allows 



STYLE IN DISCOURSE. 139 

the mind to cling to it until it is fully appreciated. All 
the words coming in between are not so emphatic from 
position but may be made more emphatic by giving 
them an unnatural position. The unexpected, the un- 
usual, or unnatural adds emphasis; so elements such 
as adjectives and adverbs are made emphatic by giving 
them positions not usually occupied by them. Thus the 
adjective usually precedes its noun, but for emphasis 
it may follow. The subject may be put last, in which 
case it becomes emphatic. Odd inversions, however, 
should be avoided. In writing it is not good taste to 
put words in italics or small capitals. Words should 
receive their proper prominence and importance from 
position and from that alone. Only the less skillful 
need ever resort to italics or capitals. These are use- 
ful in text books, but not in regular literary effort. 

Repeating words does not usually make them em- 
phatic. Some speakers have a habit of repeating ex- 
pressions, and sometimes whole sentences to make 
them emphatic. I do not think it safe to repeat 
much, though at times a word may be repeated with 
good effect. If the proper place is given to the word 
it will be emphatic and if not it will be useless to go to 
great length to make it so. 



140 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

Rapidity. — Some words move from off the vocal 
organs more rapidly than others. They may convey 
the same ideas, but the combination of sound making 
up the words is different, and hence the difference in 
rapidity. It depends upon the thought whether or not 
one wants the words to move rapidly. But one can 
arrange his words so as to correspond to the 
thought. A sentence composed entirely of words of 
one syllable moves slowly because all the syllables are 
accented. Unaccented syllables are shorter and hence 
move along more rapidly. In description, in enumerat- 
ing particulars, or in giving details one wants the dis- 
course to move rapidly. Rapidity enables one to put 
much into little time without worrying his hearers. 
Even though one may be giving tedious details, yet if 
it is felt that one is really hastening, criticism is not so 
likely to come. We do not harshly criticise the one 
who is doing his best. Study that arrangement of 
words and subject matter which will best lend itself 
to dispatch in delivery, and emphasis and force will 
receive reinforcement from rapidity. The parts lack- 
ing rapidity come out by contrast and are emphatic. 

Tone. — The tone of discourse is the true index of the 
man. The sweep of Milton's sentences shows us the 
Stride of his gigantic intellect. His intellectual steps, 



STYLE IN DISCOURSE. 141 

as indicated by the length of his sentences, are much 
too long for the ordinary reader, and so critics tell us 
Milton might have written better had he written 
shorter sentences. However, I think we sometimes, at 
least, admire even that which we cannot fully compre- 
hend, and if we are not too selfish, we applaud the 
man who can step farther than we can. So I would not 
condemn Milton for failing to keep step with me. The 
boy admires the steps of his father even though he be 
unable to toe it from one footprint to the other. 

But tone does not belong to sentence length or struc- 
ture alone, it expresses the subtile fitness of language 
to thought which would not allow an author in speak- 
ing of the dwelling of a poor trapper to call it a man- 
sion, but would call it rather a hut as it really is. Thus 
once having set the tone of seriousness, let it be kept 
throughout. Words and ideas must all strive toward 
maintaining the tone fixed upon in the beginning. In 
public speaking one must avoid the very familiar as 
well as the excessively pedantic tone. Do not be too 
dignified nor too common. Do not be stiff or rigid 
in style ; the tone may even be too lofty for the theme 
you are treating. A speech in the senate chamber at 
the national capital on the repeal for tariff would have 
a tone entirely different from a speech given to a 



142 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

crowd of Texas cowboys on the diseases of cattle. 
A funeral oration has, or should have, a tone very dis- 
tant from that of an after-dinner speech. Occasions 
and subjects instinctively seek their own certain tones 
and this the literary genius will feel. The speaker 
should feel the importance of his position and not 
condescend to petty personalities, thus lowering the 
tone of his address. All trivial, unimportant matter 
should be left out, since it, too, lowers the tone. Yet 
for less important occasions and with themes of lowly 
character it is well to take care to keep the language 
in harmony with the character of the matter and the 
occasion. 



CHAPTER X. 
Delivery of Discourse. 

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pic- 
tures of silver." — Prov. 25 : 11. 

Speaking Natural. — Miss Olive Malvery tells the 
story of an English schoolboy who was asked to de- 
scribe the mode of capital punishment in different 
countries. He said : " In Russia they kill people witli 
the knout. In China they kill people with the sword, 
In France they kill people with the guillotine. In 
America they kill people with elocution.'' Some very 
good men and very well meaning, too, have, in a sim- 
ilar manner, attempted to laugh down elocution, vo- 
ciferously declaring, the while, that true success in 
public speaking is attained through naturalness, and 
failing to see that elocution may be natural as well 
as artificial. In fact all great actors or imperso- 
nators have a natural gift as well as do all great poets 
and musicians. It takes practice to develop the talent 
however. 

Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, 
is quoted by Mr. P. M. Pearson in Talent (June, 

143 



144 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

1904) as saying: "As a rule I can't help feeling 
that the average writer should be read but not heard. 
Riley is a notable exception. He is an extremely 
good man on the platform. But Riley is a born actor. 
He has the gift of humor, of mimicry. He is an actor 
in his very delivery and appearance, and, of course, 
therefore, as a reader he has a rare faculty.'' There 
is something about the orator that we want to hear, 
something we want to see, for we are not satisfied 
by simply reading his discourse. What is it we want? 
It is his delivery. Yes, in spite of all we may say to 
the contrary, it is this same elocution of which we have 
made so much fun, that we want to hear. Barrett 
Wendell in his " Literary History of America " in 
speaking of Wendell Philips brings out this same point. 
He says : " His speeches were true speeches. In print, 
lacking the magic of his delivery, they are like the 
words of songs which for lyric excellence need the 
melodies to which they have once been wedded. Who- 
ever heard him speak remembers his performance 
with admiration." 

Make the Body Speak. — According to Henry Ward 
Beecher, who " was unquestionably one of the very 
greatest of all masters living or dead of men in speech,' , 
the whole body should be made to speak in the deliv- 



DELIVERY OF DISCOURSE. 145 

ery of discourse. Nothing could be more definite 
than the following from him : " But beside that, what 
power is there in posture, or in gesture! By it, how 
many discriminations are made; how many complex 
things men are made to comprehend ! How many 
things the body can tongue when the tongue cannot 
well utter the thing desired! The tongue and the 
person are to cooperate; and having been trained to 
work together, the result is spontaneous, unthought of, 
unarranged for." And then in reference to the ac- 
quirement of such powers Mr. Beecher further says: 
" The whole man can be made to speak ; eyes, face, 
hands, body, limbs — yes, the very color and breath — 
can speak ; and they shall, and must, be made to speak 
if there is to be potent speech and perfect oratory." 
Every motion has its facial and bodily expression. 
Let the face be fixed and inanimate and the voice will 
be dull, monotonous, severe, — love will not be love — 
it will reach the hearer as vehemence or anger rather 
than as affection. 

Deliveries Different. — Yet, however much we may 
insist upon physical expression in delivery, we still 
recognize many different styles; indeed, each speak- 
er has his own style, whether it has much or little 
action in it. Only a rough classification is possible, 



146 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

though I care little for any classification at present. 
Edward Everett's style was studied, every word and 
gesture placed just right; Rufus Choate was excessive- 
ly impetuous, pouring out torrents of thought in force- 
ful language: Webster, unlike either of the former, 
was all deliberation, profound but not artistic. Cap- 
tain John Smith tells us that Indian orators making 
speeches of welcome to a public guest " testify their 
love with much vehemence and so great passions that 
they sweat till they drop and are so out of breath 
that they can scarce speak ; so that a man would take 
them to be exceeding angry or stark mad." These 
orators would certainly belong to the class that gesture, 
yet they had not learned the first lesson of delivery, 
which is that the body must serve the soul. Trutli 
may, indeed, be the arrow, but man, as the bow, must 
drive it home. 

Thought and Delivery Must Wed. — In the con- 
certed action of body and soul lies the irresistible 
witchery of public speech. Villari says of Savonarola : 
" Suddenly Savonarola shakes off his fetters and 
thrusts every obstacle aside ; his discourse has touched 
on some vital point of interest both to himself and to 
his audience; colossal images present themselves to 
his mind; his fancy is fired; his gestures are more 



DELIVERY OF DISCOURSE. 147 

animated; his eyes seem to flame; his originality is 
suddenly asserted ; he is a great and powerful orator." 
There is little question as to the principal element in 
the oratory of Stephen A. Douglas. Mr. McLaughlin 
in his " History of the American Nation " character- 
izes him as " powerful in debate ; " though " his lan- 
guage was not elegant and his manners were coarse 
yet he spoke with vehemence, with consummate 
shrewdness and adroitness." In his time he was one 
of the greatest debaters in congress. It was his earn- 
estness, his vehemence coupled with his adroitness that 
made him the powerful public speaker he was. 

Earnestness. — Edmund Gosse emphasizes this char- 
acteristic when he says, " Let a man speak with earn- 
estness and promptitude." In the opinion of Prof. 
Wilkinson, Talmage was not lacking in these either. 
" The vitality of Dr. Talmage," he says, " is remark- 
able. He gives his hearers plenty of what hearers 
invariably like best of all from speakers, that is life. 
The matter and manner both are instinct with vitali- 

ty." 

This life, this earnestness takes hold of an audience 
as nothing else can. But if the soul be fully afire 
the outward expressions will not be lacking. They 
will show in bodily action. It seems to me impossible 



148 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

to separate soul-earnestness and physical or bodily 
earnestness. Could Patrick Henry have produced 
such a profound impression had his famous speech 
lacked in physical earnestness? Notice the account 
of that speech in Randall's " Life of Jefferson " : 

" Henry rose with an unearthly fire burning in his 
eyes. He commenced somewhat calmly, but the 
smothered excitement began more and more to play 
upon his features and thrill in the tones of his voice. 
The tendons of his neck stood out white and rigid 
like whip cords. His voice grew louder and louder, 
until the walls of the building, and all within them, 
seemed to shake and rock in its tremendous vibra- 
tion. Finally, his pale face and glaring eye became 
terrible to look upon. Men leaned forward in their 
seats, with their heads strained forward, their faces 
pale, and their eyes glaring, like the speaker's. His 
last exclamation, ' Give me liberty, or give me death ! ' 
was like the shout of the leader which turns back the 
routed battle. The old man from whom this tradi- 
tion was derived added that, when the orator sat 
down, he himself felt sick with excitement. Every 
eye yet gazed entranced on Henry, It seemed as if 
a word from him would have led to any wild explosion 
of violence. Men looked beside themselves." 



DELIVERY OF DISCOURSE. 149 

Mr. John Roane, who heard Henry, said " that the 
orator's voice, countenance, and gestures gave an ir- 
resistible force to his words, which no description 
could make intelligible to one who had never seen him 
or heard him speak." 

Eye and Voice Aglow. — Webster gestured little if 
at all. The charm of his delivery lay in the glance of 
his great, lustrous eyes and the melody of his rich 
voice with its musical intonation. There must be 
something aside from the mere thought given if a 
speaker is to hold his audience. An address is a public 
performance and necessarily demands skill and ability 
in its delivery. To ignore efficiency in delivery is to 
court failure. Yet I do not insist that all speakers 
should have the same amount of action in their de- 
livery, for I think there are good reasons for the dif- 
ference in gestures. 

Gesture and Mind Habitudes. — Some minds work 
best in quietude, others best under pressure. Some 
need a certain amount of physical activity to do their 
best work. Tennyson walked in his garden to stimu- 
late thought, Burns followed the plow while compos- 
ing his ballads. Many public speakers need the ac- 
tion derived from gestures for the attainment of their 
best work. Again, some memories are rather weak 



150 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

and gestures assist in filling in the gaps caused by 
failure of memory. Other memories are strong and 
do not need this aid. It is true, too, that some orators 
are more emotional than others. To them gestures 
are more necessary. They are more imaginative and 
deal in concrete images while others more intellectual 
deal more in abstract thought. Cold, critical, subtle, 
unimpassioned speakers use gestures sparingly. Their 
minds are largely engaged in generalizing, compar- 
ing, contrasting, in explaining and simplifying and 
defining, wherein little of the picturesque or emotional 
is found. Gestures are of little service and so they are 
not used. The impassioned speaker whose strength 
lies in an appeal to the emotions and will of his hear- 
er invariably resorts to physical earnestness and bodily 
movement in delivery, primarily because the vivid- 
ness of his images and the intensity of his feelings 
have a natural reaction upon his own body — he can 
scarcely keep from moving. Evidently the line of 
least resistance lies in gesture. So his gestures are 
natural. 

Thus the speaker who deals in general principles 
and theories, the one who explains and simplifies, 
appeals to the intellect. It is difficult for him to sup- 
plement and enforce by gestures. He must depend 



DELIVERY OF DISCOURSE. 151 

upon the subtle distinctions in words and in the vari- 
ations of grammar and rhetoric. His hearers, too, 
are prepared for thought, not action. Gestures are 
out of place and so he does not use them. We may 
say, too, that he drops them as much because they can 
not serve his purpose so well as something else as 
that they are not proper. 

The speaker who has a strong memory, depends 
upon it. It scarcely ever fails him and he does not lack 
for words. Words answer his purpose and he drops 
his gestures. The speaker whose memory is not so 
trustworthy is now and then disappointed by it just 
at a moment when he cannot afford to fail — silence 
to him is unbearable — he coughs, he takes a drink, 
or blows his nose, memory strains every power and 
finally comes to his support, and the speaker has not 
failed, gesture has saved him. But you are mistaken 
if you insist that he did it purposely. He only fol- 
lowed the line of least resistance plainly dictated by 
his mental and emotional temperament. 

Delivery as Affected by the Hearer's Attitude. — 
While it is very evident that a speaker is not wholly 
responsible for the kind of delivery inflicted upon 
his hearers upon certain occasions, yet it must be ad- 
mitted that he is very generally conceded the praise, 



152 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

should there be any given, and is almost invariably 
censured if any defect appear in his delivery. 

It is so easy for hearers to forget, if they ever knew 
it, that the physical environment, even aside from the 
bodily health of the speaker, has a great deal to do 
with his delivery. How can a speaker become en- 
thusiastic on a hot summer evening when through 
open, unscreened windows myriads of gnats, flies, 
moths, and mosquitoes keep up a constant buzz and 
an incessant attack upon all in the house? At times 
the lamps are almost put out by the swarms of beetles 
that heedlessly add their fury to the flames and blind- 
ly fling themselves against the brilliant glass of the 
lamps. This is not enough; some good deacon must 
sleep and snore, some baby must cry and some girl 
must giggle. Yet through it all the patient public 
speaker delivers his message. Scarcely dare he open 
his mouth lest he swallow flies, and yet he fully real- 
izes that he must open it very wide or he will not be 
able to drown all other noises. He does his best, and 
after church is over hears the deacon commenting up- 
on the " dry " sermon, while the giggling girl de- 
clares " she didn't hear half of it, the pastor spoke so 
low." 

Aside from this direct influence there is a sub- 



DELIVERY OF DISCOURSE. 153 

tier, though no less certain, influence to be found in 
the clash of the temperament of the speaker with the 
prejudices of his hearers. Let me explain by means 
of the concrete. You are a layman. You sit in a 
pew and listen to the pastor. You prefer to hear a 
man who does not gesture when he talks, and because 
the speaker uses gestures you act indifferent, listless 
and possibly insulting. Now, I say, you do not take 
the proper course, for you will only make the speaker's 
delivery worse and add to your own displeasure. If 
the speaker is timid and sensitive, your conduct will 
make his delivery halting, groping. Your displeas- 
ure irritates and confuses him. He does not want to 
insult you and he wonders what he could have said or 
done to displease you. He wants to amend, but he 
does not know where the trouble lies and so he gropes 
about trying to strike the charmed manner or thought 
which can win your sympathy. His groping and 
hesitating only tend, however, to emphasize the pe- 
culiarities of his style, and he grows worse and worse, 
and you become more and more disgusted with him. 
Now, you, gentle hearer, and not the speaker, are to 
blame for the poor delivery of that discourse. It is 
very difficult for the speaker to get away from the 



154 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

limitations of his temperament, the real basis of his 
peculiarities. 

Now if, instead of being timid and sensitive, the 
speaker should be positive, combative and physically 
strong, your listlessness would stir his blood. His 
heart would quicken its pace, his cheeks would flush, 
his eyes flash, and his hands would want to reach you. 
He would rouse you by shaking you, he would con- 
vince you by force of argument, he would compel you 
to listen to him; and so he grows louder and louder, 
and the sulkier you become the more demonstrative 
does he grow in his gestures. 

Change your attitude, give an attentive ear and a 
sympathetic face to the speaker's words, and the for- 
mer will lose its halting and stumbling and the latter 
will become easy and graceful in gesture so that you 
will scarcely notice his movements. With either of 
these men you converse pleasantly because you listen 
attentively, and neither one needs to exert himself 
unduly to hold your attention. Did you but strive as 
hard in your part of listening as they in their part of 
speaking, a common meeting ground would soon give 
perfect sympathy, and then all displeasing peculiarities 
would vanish. 

The value of all this is in its suggestive character. 



DELIVERY OF DISCOURSE. 155 

The speaker who strives to please his hearers will 
very likely go far astray, only making things worse, 
unless he knows exactly what is wrong and just how 
to remedy it. Besides, while there may be a few or 
even a great many who do not like the speaker's style, 
there may be, on the other hand, a great many who do 
like it. Yet the latter number would hardly like best 
the most accentuated form of the speaker's style. And 
for this reason his extra efforts to please are vain, 
they only result in displeasure to both parties. The 
time for study, correction and change in style is not 
during the delivery of a discourse, but between times 
of delivery. Every change should be well considered 
before attempted, for a change in style may mean 
much more than the speaker at first thought. What- 
ever the style, he who uses it should be its master. 

A style highly approved when used by one who is its 
master becomes disgusting when used by an imitator. 
Even " bad grammar," I sometimes think, goes better 
and accomplishes its purpose better for the speaker, if 
used with skill and precision by him, than does per- 
fect grammar in the hands of one who has to stop to 
think up rules and now and then go back to correct 
the number of a verb or the case of a pronoun. A 
master chopper with a somewhat dull and even much- 



156 PROBLEMS OF PULPIT AND PLATFORM. 

nicked ax will, by the very ease and skill of his chop- 
ping, elicit our admiration. An awkward, ineffectual 
chopper, even though he use a perfect tool, cannot 
win our sympathy, for his efforts are too painful. So, 
whatever the style, the speaker should be its master; 
in its use he should find ease and grace. It must be 
his own. Any delivery which at all answers the re- 
quirements of our age must have as its essential quali- 
ties distinct enunciation, sufficient loudness to be easily 
heard, and vital soul-earnestness which communicates 
itself through eye, voice, or other organs. The de- 
livery which lacks any one of these is sadly wanting. 
If a speaker would be 'effective to the highest degree 
of his possibilities, he should spare no pains in perfect- 
ing his own style of delivery. 



NOV 30 



